I was excited early on Friday morning to see my first Calico Pennant dragonflies (Celithemis elisa) of the season while exploring Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge. These small, brightly-colored dragonflies have become one of my favorites over the past year.
It is pretty early in their season and all of the ones that I spotted appeared to be immature—the patterns on the wings will soon get darker and more pronounced and bodies of the males, which start out yellow like those of the females, will turn red.
I have long wanted to capture shots of a dragonfly covered in morning dew or raindrops and the quest for these images helps motivate me to venture out early in the morning. If you click on the final photo and examine it at higher resolution, you will see tiny drops of water on the vegetation and a drop or two on the dragonfly’s wings. It’s not quite as I have imagined, but it is a good start.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
Excellent shots as usual. Here in the desert (Tucson), we are able to see dragonflies at the Sweetwater Wetlands, a water treatment facility, an urban wildlife habitat, and an outdoor classroom. The monsoon rains later this summer will bring on a lot more dragonflies.
Thanks, kenne. We are fortunate to have a number of different habitats in our area that are home to a wide variety of dragonflies. The challenge is to match the species with the habitat and then to search for them at the right time of the year. Some species are around for only a short period of time and then disappear, while others are present for months and months.
Nice Mike! Can’t wait till Dragonflies start showing up here in larger numbers! So far only see one or two here or there.
We have had some temperatures soar to the low 90’s (32 C) and that has caused some of the dragonfly species to finally emerge.
Great shots, Mike. Beautiful beading on the wings… now that is sharp focus!
Thanks, Chris. I shot the one with the water drops with my 150-600mm zoom lens and sometimes have ended up having to focus manually–I think that it helps that I am using a monopod most of the time for additional stability.
Monopods are great – I sometimes use mine on board when I am photographing birds from the boat and we are moving around a lot.
Benjamin listened intently as I read a condensed version of the post. Then, he peered closely at each enlarged photo. The middle photo captured his attention because he likes the visibility of the eyes & body coloration. On the first and third photos, he liked the clear view of the patterns on their wings…”It looks like a spider web at the bottom.” He was able to pick out the water droplets on the last photo and worried if “he can still fly.” Thank-you, Mr. Mike!!