Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: Dragonfly

Tomorrow will be the very first day of spring, at last, but we still have a way to go before all our snow disappears. March is said to be our snowiest month, too. Our temperature this morning, 19 March 2018, is 0C (windchill -3C) with a temperature of 3C for this afternoon. I came across this old photo from my archives, taken on 23 July 2014, to help fill in the gap between now and when there should be a lot more to photograph. Apart from the recent Great Gray Owls, I haven't really been getting any new photos. The next two months are going to be busy months for me, so I'm not sure just how much I will be getting out with my camera. After a volunteer shift on 23 July 2014, I wasn't too far away from the Erlton/Roxboro Natural Area, where I was finally going to go on a botany walk. Having been to this location several times before, I knew it was a short, easy, flat trail, and that I could go as far as I wanted and then turn back early, which is what I did. I had missed pretty well all the botany and birding walks the previous few months, which was quite depressing. The main thing I wanted to see were the Nodding / Musk Thistles, as these are my favourite species of Thistle. They are called a "weed", but I love to see them. The sun was unfortunately in the wrong direction, so I was only able to get a handful of shots, but better than nothing. With a couple of hours to "kill", I spent them at the Reader Rock Garden, which was just a few minutes' drive away from the evening botany walk location. This is where I took this Dragonfly shot on a Poppy seedpod. Think it is probably a female Cherry-faced Meadowhawk?

After a volunteer shift on 23 July 2014, I wasn't too far away from the Erlton/Roxboro Natural Area, where I was finally going to go on a botany walk. Having been to this location several times before, I knew it was a short, easy, flat trail, and that I could go as far as I wanted and then turn back early, which is what I did. I missed pretty well all the botany and birding walks last year, which was quite depressing. The main thing I wanted to see were the Nodding / Musk Thistles, as these are my favourite species of Thistle. They are called a "weed", but I love to see them. With a couple of hours to "kill", I spent them at the Reader Rock Garden, which was just a few minutes' drive away from the evening botany walk location. This is where I took this Dragonfly shot. Think it is probably a female Cherry-faced Dragonfly?

After a volunteer shift on 23 July 2014, I wasn't too far away from the Erlton/Roxboro Natural Area, where I was finally going to go on a botany walk. Having been to this location several times before, I knew it was a short, easy, flat trail, and that I could go as far as I wanted and then turn back early, which is what I did. I've missed pretty well all the botany and birding walks the last few months, which is quite depressing. The main thing I wanted to see were the Nodding / Musk Thistles, as these are my favourite species of Thistle. They are called a "weed", but I love to see them. The sun was unfortunately in the wrong direction, so I was only able to get a handful of shots, but better than nothing. With a couple of hours to "kill", I spent them at the Reader Rock Garden, which was just a few minutes' drive away from the evening botany walk location. This is where I took this Dragonfly shot. Think it is probably a female Cherry-faced Dragonfly?

Last summer, I took very few Dragonfly photos, mainly because most of the parks and natural areas were closed after the devastation caused by Alberta's Flood of the Century. Saw this one - a Cherry-faced Meadowhawk? - at Pearce Estate (near Inglewood Bird Sanctuary, which is still closed thanks to the flood of June 2013).

When I opened my front door and took a step outside early this morning to go on a walk in the Bragg Creek Natural Area, I thought I dropped something. When I looked down to my mat, there was this beautiful Blue Darner lying there. I pushed my boot towards it gently, but it didn't move. I wondered if it was dead, but I decided to just wait and see if it was still there when I returned a few hours later. No sign of it. I think it must have been on the outside of my door earlier and I disturbed it. These guys almost never stop still, so it was a treat for me : ). Of course I had to take a few quick photos of it before I hurried on my way, despite the messy background!

About nine of us spent the day today at the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains, at Bow Valley Provincial Park. The main focus was on birds of the area, but we were surrounded by wildflowers and insects, too. This provincial park is an amazing area for flowers at this time of the year. Lots of wild orchids, for a start! Not sure what the temperature was, but somewhere around 30C. I think this could be a Four-spotted Skimmer (Libellula quadrimaculata).

Somehow, the battered wings of this Cherry-faced Meadowhawk (?) seemed to catch the sunlight even more than normal and it looked so pretty fluttering. I didn't realize how badly damaged its wings were till I got home, as this was taken at some distance. Thought I'd post it, despite its imperfections : ) Photographed at Maclean Pond, Kananaskis, on August 29th.

First, an admission, lol - I very quickly "fixed" the forewing on the right, to fill in a missing area. Just don't have time to try and do a better job of it, but at least it now annoys me less : ) Two of us took forever to try and get our cameras to focus on this Dragonfly - the mass of grass behind it stopped both of our cameras from getting anything more than a complete blur where the Dragonfly was sitting. Eventually managed a few shots that were sharp - and then I discovered at home that this male had part of a wing missing, ha. Photographed at the end of our day of botanizing north of Calgary, at the Medicine River Wildlife Centre. Thank you so much, Carol and Judy, for allowing us to botanize an area where the public is not allowed to go - we feel very privileged and appreciate it greatly. Judy, thanks so much for coming with us for the day and showing us all sorts of neat things. I hope the baby Catbird was eventually united with another Catbird family : ) www.medicineriverwildlifecentre.ca/ Yay, I am finally working on the pages of the list of sentimental items (left to me by my parents and very recently, my brother) that are on their way from England to Canada. I have to type in a value for each of the 400+ items. I can see I will have to do a lot of juggling of amounts to fit the final total that has already been declared. Most of the items have no value at all, except for sentimental value. I am expecting to be contacted by Customs before too long, so I have no choice but to get this list done and gather together all the other forms and papers that I will need to take to their office. Anyone would think I'm trying to smuggle illegal "stuff" into the country, ha, ha!

A rare (for me) photo of a Dragonfly, taken at Reader Rock Garden on August 11th. I don't often seem to see Dragonflies any more - maybe I just wasn't going for walks in the right places.

Thanks to Susan, we were able to witness this female Subarctic Darner (Aeshna subarctica) with its disgarded nymph casing, when we were botanizing the Elkton Bog, near Cremona. Susan caught the last moment of it emerging, but the rest of us were able to see it resting and drying out before eventually flying off. I have a photo of just the casing that I will upload soon - quite amazing to see - almost looks like it's made of very thin copper. "The Subarctic Darner is restricted to Sphagnum bogs and deep fens that are dominated by aquatic moss. The moss need not be Sphagnum and the water not necessarily very acidic; other aquatic mosses such as Drepanocladus and Scorpidium are more commonly associated with this dragonfly....Eggs are laid directly into floating moss." From www.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca .

This photo was taken on 17th August last year, presumably of a Black Meadowhawk, down in Weaselhead. Having to dig into my Archives is beginning to leave me feeling rather uninspired : (

Oh, what a messy photo, LOL! It's so unusual, though, for one of these large Blue Darners to actually land, that I wanted to keep this image, mess and all. Seen in the Weaselhead this afternoon.

This Dragonfly looked different (more brown than green, certainly from this angle), but I believe it is a female Cherry-faced Meadowhawk. Found at Griffith Woods, off Highway 6 in the city.

This is a female Cherry-faced Meadowhawk, seen in Weaselhead Natural Area a couple of days ago. Unlike last summer, I have seen so few Dragonflies this year, so this is one of only several photos that I've managed to take.

Another strange photo. I used the following explanation for a previously uploaded photo of a Clearwing Moth on an orange Sunflower: "About 25 years ago, I was doing a lot of enrichment work as a volunteer teacher with elementary school children. One of the things I did was to use hand lenses with dead insects! My small collection was finally unearthed from my basement recently and when I peered into the tray, the very first thing I saw was a small Clearwing Moth." Today, I had another look amongst all the debris of loose wings, legs and heads, and found this dragonfly. Thought I'd use it, too, on one of the sunflowers.

Yet another photo of a dragonfly, a Cherry-faced Meadowhawk, seen in Shaw's Meadow, Fish Creek Park. They land on the evergreen trees there, which is different. Normally, I see these insects land on plants.