Have you ever had a photo shoot with a dragonfly? The day I took this was summery and extremely humid. I miss those days as these days, we got ice on plants everywhere. Most of all - not a sight of them dragonflies.
Dragonflies stick their abdomens upward when it's too hot to cool themselves off. This is a Common Darter Dragonfly. A younger male as he is red- brown. They turn darker red when matured.
When resting and they need to warm themselves up, they spread their wings. That's the best time to take snap shots and if you don't have a monkey mind and are very very calm you could get lucky they'll strike a pose and even smile for you like this one. For some reasons, they always seem to be smiling. Just like Asians, always happy no matter how big the problems are.
I took this some years ago with my Samsung Galaxy Note 1 and have shared it privately in my fbuk.
Those wings are my favorite not because they make them fly but there's a memory attached to it. One day, when I was just six, I came home with a dragonfly my friends and I caught in the field on the way back home from school. It's easy to catch them back then cause they were a bunch and they'd be perched just along the way on fences or any stick and we'd clip their four wings between our index and thumb and we got one. That day, one of my friends took their wings off.
When I got home, mine still had its wings and while I was showing off my grandpa that I caught one huge "carabao dragonfly" I also told him that I found out that if I take their wings off they won't be able to fly. I took one wing off to show him and my gramps stood up from his chair by the window ( he was always sitting on that chair when I get home waiting for us .. maybe watching us through that huge window then) grabbed my other hand about to take another wing off the poor creature and shouted at me; " That poor creature is doing its best to survive and you've just crippled him!". I was aghast cause gramps never shouted on me except when he got pissed off which I wrote about in this post that I let go of the dragonfly and it was able to still fly. That day gramps gave me soft littany to leave nature alone and to this day, I have never dewinged any creature except the Alates or the flying ants. I just don't want them in my house.
Those beautiful wings are very essential to the dragonflies. The bigger the wings, the faster they could flap away. The biggest dragonflies could fly as fast as 30 miles per hour. Guess what, those wings operate independently so even if it loses one wing, it would still be able to fly. Now, don't you dare try take one off! Though I don't believe in reincarnation or ghost my gramps would go after you! The best fact about their wings is that they actually allow them to fly upside down - probably happens when mating on top of the water.
I love having them in the garden because they eat plenty of aphids which we got a lot cause we got ants in the garden that milk them aphids. The dragonflies along with the lady bugs help me combat those leaves eating pesky aphids. The best part about having dragonflies is that - these guys eat non- stop as long as they are awake. Talk about gluttony with that thin body. Reminds me of my friends always saying;"How could you eat that much and stay this slim?" If you live near swamps or any area with water, worry not about mosquitoes as long as you have dragonflies they'll munch on lots of them. The only sad part about 'em is sometimes, if they are bigger than huge they could actually take out a butterfly which are my favorite insects. Yes, like @jamtaylor and other photographers, I love critters and creepy crawlers that's why I often drop by @mweich and @ocrdu who post such cute tiny six legged crawlers.
I took this one with my Samsung Galaxy Note 1. This one's a she as the males are more of red and this one's yellow - brown.
To attract dragonflies plant some lavenders in your garden. They love resting on stalks and the longer the stalks are the better. These lavender blooms have already withered but I let them stay and just cut the short ones every year, to lure dragonflies for photo shoots. Those puny tubers of the lavender blooms have teeny tiny creepy crawlers the size of a dot that creeps pretty fast, you could probably just see using a microscope - that's why they love sitting on them. Free food, perfect camouflage and plenty of sunlight to warm their wings.
I took this one with a Samsung Galaxy Note 1.
Now, this pic looks like he is smiling down on me and that smile is freaking contagious it brought me to smile at him back then and now, as well. In some Oriental countries, they consider the dragonfly as a spirit animal and believe that one who has it as their spirit animal needs to go through metamorphosis, have a great adaptability in life, capable of adapting to any changes to become their full potential. That's because the dragonfly was laid as an egg in the water, swam there as a nymph(so before you throw any trash in a pond think of the baby dragonflies!!!), crawled on to a leaf and became a pupa, flew into the air and finally land on some ground or any plants on the ground for the rest of his beautiful life. They also believe that those who have the dragonfly as their spirit animals are capable of showing their true colors and manage to shine just like those creatures with colorful wings that flashes when hit by the sunshine.
The dragonfly above ....though it looks like it has two eyes with one pupil in the middle they call "facets", actually have 30,000 individual facets. Each facet, or ommatidia, makes its own image, and it has 8 pairs of neurons that allow those images to become one vivid picture. It's not just that, they also have four or five opsins. Opsins are the proteins in our eyes that allow us to see red, green and blue (one color per opsin) and we humans, have three opsins only compared to the dragonflies. Because of this, they could see the UV light, the same vision we have when we put on polarized sunglasses and any other normal colors. Those cute helmet looking eyes also give it a 360 degree eye view. So they don't really have to look down to see me while I was taking his picture cause - they could see me when they're flying towards me and they could also see me when they are flying away. Talk about mind blowing! Who needs third eyes when you have those dragonfly eyes. Okay those two are different :D. Unlike cars, they don't have blind spots making it easy for them to escape predators.
Dr. S.D. Wiederman conducted a study on them and found out that though these guys have that much facets, they could not really multitask looking at things. They tend to focus on one subject,then the other and then another subject. That must explain why this one looks like it's checking me out from above. They have a selective attention span - that's what they found out when they attached a nano - electrode inside the visual processing neuron of a dragonfly (yes, I also dropped my jaw and said ; "wotttt?" when I read about it- how on earth do you attach an electrode to its visual neuron? with a needle? how?).
There are marshes near my place and one of my neighbors have a mini pond in their backyard which probably explains why we have plenty of them dragonflies and frogs. Ever had a photo shoot with a dragonfly? If yes, what's it like? If no, why don't you hang a thread or stick some twigs or sticks on the ground of a pot or better yet, have a lavender in your garden to attract them in summer. They'd use any stick like thing - even your finger to perch on. If you feel like catching them, wait till they stretch their wings like planes on landing fields and carefully give their abdomen a light pinch and you've got them closer for you to check out. Hold all four wings in the middle of your index and middle finger but not to tight! Better yet, lick your finger and stick them out and surely - you'll get them sitting on it if you don't have a monkey mind.
sources:
Common darter
14 Fun Facts About Dragonflies
Dragonfly Damselfly Power Animal Symbol Of Change Piercing Illusions Light Understanding Dreams
Here are my other posts about insects I took pictures of in my garden.
I usually blog about cooking, gardening and photography and if you happen to be interested in all of those, too .
I took the rest of the pictures with my Samsung Galaxy A3 2016 edition.
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