Birds and Nature

I caught this beautiful dragonfly in flight at the John Martin Res State Wildlife Area. It was patrolling some emergent wetlands and about 75 feet away, in a tree, was a singing male Dickcissal! Not far away in one of wooded areas of this SWA I heard a Yellow-billed Cuckoo call. Though it called 3 times I wasn't able to spot it and I didn't want to spend much time as I was being devoured by female deer flies (the females need blood meals to lay eggs just like marsh mosquitoes) and mosquitoes. For super close-ups just double-click on each pic. SeEtta

I took these pics of this brilliant colored member of the dragonfly family, aptly named Blue-eyed Darner, as flew from one end of a small wetland to the other end and then back. Like others of it's kind, it spends a lot of time patrolling it's territory and chasing interlopers away. My experience with this species is the same as noted on MonterayBay.com : "Perched darners are rarely observed. . . ." and "Dragonflies are difficult to photograph in flight." Indeed--just as soon as one starts to hover in one place and I put my camera up to my eye, it darts off. Since they often are flying in and out of shadows, then sun, camera settings have to be reset. And since they are moving, the focus has to be continually focused (I find that automatic focus is worthless with moving dragonflies as well as moving birds). I find that in super close-up views this species has a funny face--the large blue ovals are indeed it's blue eyes and it looks like it has a da...