It has been a while since I had last posted about dragonflies. All of these, except for the last one, came from the Magic Field. That place is home to many other species of dragonflies as well. I have been greatly aided by the book Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East by Paulson, and of course BugGuide also has its uses. It may be that I am wrong about some of the ID’s, and if so would very much appreciate help from Tony on them.

First is a large darner dragonfly which I think is new to me. It looks to be a male spatterdock darner (Rhionaeschna mutata). A more mature male will have lovely blue eyes, and it may be those that I see flying in the Magic Field from time to time.
Spatterdock1 by Mark Sturtevant, on Flickr

Next are a couple clubtail dragonflies. This seems an exceptionally large family (a large chunk of the book is on just this family), and many are hard to distinguish from each other. So here goes.
The first two appears to be a male and female lancet clubtail (Phanogomphus exilis). The female is eating what may be a robber fly.
Lancet clubtail dragonfly by Mark Sturtevant, on Flickr
Lancet clubtail dragonfly by Mark Sturtevant, on Flickr

Next is a male splendid clubtail (Gomphurus lineatifrons). The pale colors may be because it is young, but some clubtails have pale cream rather than bright yellow markings.
Splendid clubtail dragonfly by Mark Sturtevant, on Flickr

The above clubtails are common in the Magic Field. A couple other species in this family are also found there.

In closing, this is an unidentified teneral meadowhawk that seems a little shy.
Shy dragonfly by Mark Sturtevant, on Flickr

My vertical/horizontal macro rail stand arrived today so I had to put it together and try it out. In the photos below are images of it with the manual 4-way macro rail with an alligator clip to hold the subject and it also accommodates my 4x4 lab scissor jack for shots that require a flat surface which I used for this image.

I cut the bottom out of a 10-oz. translucent plastic drink cup and placed it over one of my crickets that I set on a piece of twig to stage this shot. I illuminated the cup with two gooseneck LED's from opposite sides and from the front with a disk LED gooseneck lamp. This essentially created a "light tube" to illuminate the cricket.

The camera was set at a shutter speed of 1/30th second and the lens was set at 2X with an f-stop of f-11.

Thanks in advance to all those who view and your comments, suggestions and critique are highly valued and appreciated.

My vertical/horizontal macro rail stand arrived today so I had to put it together and try it out. In the photos below are images of it with the manual 4-way macro rail with an alligator clip to hold the subject and it also accommodates my 4x4 lab scissor jack for shots that require a flat surface which I used for this image.

I cut the bottom out of a 10-oz. translucent plastic drink cup and placed it over one of my crickets that I set on a piece of twig to stage this shot. I illuminated the cup with two gooseneck LED's from opposite sides and from the front with a disk LED gooseneck lamp. This essentially created a "light tube" to illuminate the cricket.

The camera was set at a shutter speed of 1/30th second and the lens was set at 2X with an f-stop of f-11.

Thanks in advance to all those who view and your comments, suggestions and critique are highly valued and appreciated.

Today was the first busy day at the bird feeders this fall. I put the first birdseed out last week, and have had nothing but squirrels until today. The trail camera did get one deer nosing around last night. Trying to stretch her neck to reach a feeder. The construction down the street seems to have caused the fox squirrels to move into my yard. They are more aggressive, and larger, than the grey squirrels. Yesterday they knocked over the post for two of the feeders and then did a victory dance on it.
The last picture shows my camera set up. The nearest feeder is about 2 feet form my camera, and the furthest is about 10 feet. I think the glass must be reflective enough that they can ignore me -- unlike the deer who actively pose for me when I go out the back door. But today the birds, especially the purple finches did some nice posing for me, too.