A Backyard Visit

Our house backs up to a small pond, wooded most of the way around the pond, and a kind of buffer zone of wild flowers/weeds.  The wildflower area is my very favorite spot as it attracts a lot of bees, butterflies, dragonflies, damselflies, birds and critters and insects of every type.  I never know what I’m going to see when I take an allergy tablet, put on my yellow rubber rain boots to protect me from chiggers, grab my trusty camera and walk a whole 20 feet or so from the back of the house for my big adventure!


WildFlowers

I’ve never seen as many dragonflies as we have this year.  I’m sure it’s as a result of all the rain we’ve had this spring and early summer.  The most abundant dragons were the Widow Skimmers.

WidowSkimmer2

A couple of new finds for me made this an extra fun “outing”.  A Dot-Tailed White Face Dragonfly:

DotTailedWhiteFace

as well as a Halloween Pennant dragonfly:

Pennant

There were also some Meadowhawks:

WhiteFacedMeadowhawk

There were so many dragonflies, I even saw two sharing a stem — a Widow Skimmer and a 12-Spotted Skimmer:

Skimmers

A zillion blue damselflies:

Damselfly

and a new bird for my list — a Common Yellowthroat Warbler nestled down in the tall grass (the second photo shows his eyelid closed):

CommonYTW2

CommonYellowThroatedW

Whew!  That was all in about a half an hour.  Can’t wait to get out there and do it all over again.

~Sue

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