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. Â 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. Â 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!
I’ve never seen as many dragonflies as we have this year. Â I’m sure it’s as a result of all the rain we’ve had this spring and early summer. Â The most abundant dragons were the Widow Skimmers.
A couple of new finds for me made this an extra fun “outing”. Â A Dot-Tailed White Face Dragonfly:
as well as a Halloween Pennant dragonfly:
There were also some Meadowhawks:
There were so many dragonflies, I even saw two sharing a stem — a Widow Skimmer and a 12-Spotted Skimmer:
A zillion blue damselflies:
and a new bird for my list — a Common Yellowthroat Warbler nestled down in the tall grass (the second photo shows his eyelid closed):
Whew! Â That was all in about a half an hour. Â Can’t wait to get out there and do it all over again.
~Sue