Last Tuesday I spotted several beautiful Bar-winged Skimmer dragonflies (Libellula axilena) while I was exploring a small pond in Prince William County, Virginia. The dragonflies kept choosing beautiful, but flimsy perches, so I did not have much time snag shots of them before they flew away.
According to the Dragonflies of Northern Virginia website, Bar-winged Skimmers have relatively specific habitat needs and consequently are one of the less common skimmers in our area. “It prefers very shallow marshy pools in the full sun. If there’s enough water for fish, it’s too deep for Bar-winged Skimmers. And of course shallow pools in the full sun tend to quickly evaporate and dry up, so stable populations in Northern Virginia are few and far between.”
I really like the backgrounds that I was able to capture in these shots—they are colorful, but not at all distracting. If you look closely at the leading edges of the wings, you can see the black spots and stripes that give rise to the name of this species.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
Gorgeous backgrounds in all three of these images, Mike!
Thanks, Ellen. I was fortunate that the vegetation in the background was far enough away that I was able to blur it out when using an f/8.0 aperture.
Nice Mike! Always enjoy your Dragonfly images!
Thanks, Reed.
Very nice, Mike. I love those mottled effects.
Thanks, Chris. It is not always easy to get the kind of backgrounds that I want in my wildlife shots, but it sure is nice when it works. 🙂