August 19, 2005 - dragonfly derby

More progress in my quest for decent, in-focus shots of dragonflies in flight. Here's a Black Saddlebags, head on.


And again. You can even see come of the features of a dragonfly "face": in dark indigo are the two large compound eyes (each with thousands of facets); above the two large eyes you can just see the three simple eyes in lighter blue; the bump between the two compound eyes is called a frons; below that is a larger frontal lobe called the clypeus, which is above the mouth.

Not such good focus, but a better look at the wing marking that gives the species its common name.

From this and other photos, it appears that dragonflies beat their pairs of wings in opposite directions, the forward pair beats up when the back pair beats down.

Here it is in a banking turn – the head appears to swivel and stay level while the body rolls

 

And here's that reddish species again.

There goes what looks to be a Blue-eyed Darner.

There it goes again..

Big finish – a California Darner.