Odonata Sleeping Beauties
For some reason, the dragonflies and damselflies of east Travis County have spread the word that my back yard is The Place to Sleep. I recently started going out into the backyard at night, almost every night, and I am finding the most amazing things (just check out what I've seen in a scant 0.10 acre lot). One of these amazing things is dragonflies and damselflies... sleeping.
Typically, it's a struggle to get good dragonfly photos because, believe it or not, almost every single photo I've uploaded has been taken on an iPhone 5S, and dragonflies don't really like to sit still with a human less than 10 feet away. There have been a few notable exceptions:
But most of my Odonata observations look more like:
Frustrating!
But! With flocks of dragonflies and damselflies visiting my backyard to snooze, it allows me to get super close to take their picture. Drawback: my photos are only as good as my lights source, and my replacement headlamp is horrible and I'm going to replace it soon. But it's a lot easier to get better photos when you're closer to your subjects!
I have been seeing so many sleeping Odonates with such frequency for such a long period of time that I started tagging all the sleeping dragonflies and damselflies I find in my yard. Sometimes I accidentally wake somebody up (they camouflage pretty well and I don't see them until they start blindly flying around), and sometimes the sun hasn't quite set when I see them start to settle into their sleeping spots, but for the most part, this tag is Odonates actively catching Z's.
Check it out!
Odonata Sleeping Beauties
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