outdoor photography

Amanda's Pennant This morning a friend and I decided to head out to Lake Proctor Wilderness Area to do some birding and look for dragonflies. The habitat here seemed like it might be good for a Purple Skimmer, and we wanted to see if we could find any here.  Lake Proctor is pretty low right now, and really it amounts to several ponds, but the whole area is surrounded by pine trees, and parts of it appear to have a sandy bottom, and that's a good area for Purple Skimmer. We didn't see any, but we did see about the same number of odonata species as we saw bird species, about 20 each. Atlantic Bluet Seepage Dancer I'm pretty much a novice at dragonflies, and I don't think I've ever seen so many different species on one place. I saw 8 new species: Seepage Dancer, Atlantic Bluet, Lilypad Forktail, Comet Darner, Wandering Glider, Amanda's Pennant, Ornate Pennant, and Banded Pennant. Eastern Amberwing Little Blue Dragonlet (female) L...

Swarthy Skipper About a week ago I shared the fun experience I had with Jeff Cagle at Tosohatchee WMA. We found about 30 butterflies, and more than half of them were new to me. Especially the skippers. I'm finding out that skippers can be extraordinarily difficult to identify. Some of them are like the empids of the butterfly world. Perhaps I'll feel differently once I get to know them more, but right now, that's how I feel. Twin-spot Skipper But skippers are kind of fun as well, and their small size makes them somewhat of a challenge to photograph. But often they don't mind me getting close to them if I move slowly enough, and that left me with some half-way decent photos of these guys. And that makes for some exciting time. Horace's Duskywing Skipper Confused Cloudywing With my colorblind eyes, I think of these skippers in groups of "orange" and "brown." The orange ones can be really hard to tell apart from each other, ...