Dragonfly and bee

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Dragonfly and bee

July 11, 2013 by Mike Powell

It was bound to happen. No more than I few days ago I lamented that I had never seen a dragonfly eating, in responding to a wonderful posting by Sue of Backyard Biology about dragonflies as super predators—you should check out her posting, unless you are squeamish about things like headless dragonflies.

Sure enough, this past weekend I was able to get some photos of a female Eastern Pondhawk dragonfly (Erythemis simplicicollis) with a bee that she had captured. Initially, I was just trying to get a photo of the beautiful emerald-colored dragonfly on the plant in the second photo. I didn’t even realize that she was cuddling a bee in her front legs, almost like a little baby.

Eventually she flew down from the plant to the edge of the boardwalk to enjoy her meal and I got the first shot. I had to lean over the edge of the boardwalk to get the photo and just barely avoided falling into the bushes below.

My usual experience is that I am so excited about photographing a subject the first time that I not very concerned about the quality of the images. I will keep my eyes open and hope to capture some more images of dragonflies feeding.

Posted in Dragonflies, Flowers, Gardening, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography | Tagged Alexandria VA, bee, Canon 55-250mm zoom lens, Canon Rebel XT, dragonfly, Eastern Pondhawk, Eastern Pondhawk dragonfly, Erythemis simplicicollis, Huntley Meadows Park | 8 Comments

8 Responses

on July 11, 2013 at 7:28 am | Reply Mjollnir

I rally have to get a better lens. Your macro shots just make me jealous! Great stuff as always Mike 😀
- on July 11, 2013 at 8:00 am | Reply Mike Powell
  
  Thanks. I am glad you like the shots. In this case, the close-up shots were done with a 55-250 telephoto zoom lens and not my macro lens. Sometimes the zoom lets me get a decent shot without being as physically close to the subject, though I usually have to crop the image. This past weekend I used a friend’s 180mm macro lens–it was the best of both worlds, allowing me to get the same amount of detail as my 100mm macro, but with a greater standoff distance.
  - on July 11, 2013 at 9:38 am Mjollnir
    
    I must admit to a severe amount of cropping in many of my photos too. Otherwise you’d be seeing supermarkets and airports and all sorts of stuff! 😀
on July 11, 2013 at 9:16 am | Reply Brigid Jackson

wonderful captures 🙂 *Brigid
on July 11, 2013 at 9:16 am | Reply Sue

Nice shots, Mike. Dragonflies are so quick and bees are so relatively slow, I wonder if this doesn’t happen often. And thanks for the blog reference!
on July 11, 2013 at 9:21 am | Reply nrlymrtl

Wow! I did not know they eat bees. We need the bees. Or at least my beekeeping neighbor does and I do like buying honey from him. I don’t think I will look at dragonflies the same way again.
on July 11, 2013 at 3:56 pm | Reply caleephotography

My that’s a big snack! 🙂 What a beautiful dragonfly, I’ve never seen one of those over here (this summer I haven’t seen any dragonfly yet at all). I’m impressed you take such good photos with your zoom lens!
- on July 11, 2013 at 7:35 pm | Reply Mike Powell
  
  Thanks. We’ve moved into prime season here for dragonflies and I am starting to see about four species regularly around here. The zoom lens is one of the cheaper, consumer grade Canon lenses, but it has served me well and has image stabilization, which helps in certain circumstances.