Last week while photographing wildflowers, I noticed an awful lot of dragonflies now active. So Tuesday morning I decided to exchange my macro lens for my favorite wildlife lens, the Canon 100-400mm, f/4.5-f/5.6 IS lens and go “dragon hunting”. I was not disappointed … several species were observed and photographed.
Today’s post features one of our most common dragonflies, the Eastern Pondhawk (Erythemis simplicicollis). The images are of a female of the species. Here are a few of my favorite images:
The Eastern Pondhawk is a unique creature. The are one of our largest dragonflies and usually cannot be missed when one is flying around the meadow. Both females and newly-emerged males have green and dark brown body coloration (as in the above photos). But the males begin to change colors, from green to blue, starting at the abdomen and moving forward. I did see a single male Eastern Pondhawk during my outing, but could not get close enough to grab a photo of him. I also saw a male Eastern Pondhawk in the middle of changing colors. The rear portion was blue, but the forward portion was still green. Also, not able to capture an image of him. But I will be back and working on grabbing more images of this wonderful dragonfly.
Photographic Equipment Used:
- Canon 7D Mark 2 body
- Canon EF 100-400mm, f/4.5 to f/5.6 IS lens
- Handheld, with IS “On”
- ISO 500
- Aperture f/8
- Shutter 1/100 sec. to 1/640 sec.