My favorite Darner

[Erland R.N.]

Sunday I was out in pretty good weather, a real pleasure as most of August has been rain, rain and more rain. Compare that to July this year, our warmest ever in Denmark, and really sunny

I was looking for some special species of smaller dragonflies (Sympetrum sp.), to get some good photos of the different and hard to identify kinds. I found one on some dead wood, and moved very carefully toward it and started photographing. Suddenly I realised that a large Darner dragonfly was perched just one meter from me to the right. It was my favorite, a fully mature and coloured male Aeshna cyanea, which are pretty hard to find perched. And it was perfectly isolated from background.

Turning 90 degrees to the right, I started photographing it, and after a while moved close for some detail shots like the one below (maybe macro 1:1.5). The smaller dragonfly I originally came to photograph, at some point landed on my right shutter hand


Aeshna cyanea (UK: Southern Hawker)
2nd of September, Denmark
5D, 180 mm, iso 640, f/14, 1/125 s, monopod, uncropped

cheers
Erland

[MacroLuv]

Oh what a dragonfly! Excellent! I havn't much luck with dragonflies, just a little more with Antlions.

[Ken Ramos]

A really nice photograph here Erland. The composition is great IMO and I like the way the wings fade out in to the lower right hand corner. I don't see dragonflies much in and around my area but that is not to say that they are not there. Thanks Erland, wonderful photo.

[Carl_Constantine]

I often see dragon flies but don't have my camera with me at the time but I don't see ones as colorful as this around here (at least not to my knowledge). Nice capture. Would like to see the one you originally photographed too.

[beetleman]

I agree, very nice colors on this beautiful insect and a wonderful picture also. Great job Erland.

[Erland R.N.]

Thank you all for comments, I'm glad you like the colors of this one too.

The fun part is that I did get a photograph of the Meadowhawk (Sympetrum vulgatum, female) I came for originally, before I photographed the Darner. After I managed to scare the Darner away, the Meadowhawk was stil perched in more or less the same spot. So I was able to get some more photographs of it.

iso 400, f/10, 1/250 s
A Meadowhawk species (Sympetrum vulgaum) eating some small insect.

Back home I realised that the Meadowhawk I photographed before and after, while both females of the same species, was to different individuals, with small differences in colors on abdomen etc.

[MacroLuv]

At first impression I thought it has a double tail end but this is geenesh bark. Nice second photo too.