Yesterday I had the chance to test my skill and my patience as I tried to capture images of dragonflies in flight at Jackson Miles Abbott Wetland Refuge. I believe they are a Royal River Cruiser (Macromia taeniolata), a Prince Baskettail (Epitheca cynosura), and a Russet-tipped Clubtail (Stylurus plagiatus), members of three different families of dragonflies.
The Royal River Cruiser is the most uncommon of these three species—I have only seen one a few times and this is the first time that I have gotten a decent shot of one. Cruisers are large dragonflies with large eyes and long legs that generally fly up and down streams or rivers or along lake shores. I did not expect to see one at the small pond at this refuge, but there is an adjacent wetland and a small stream, so maybe the dragonfly made a detour in its patrol over those areas. This dragonfly followed the shore of the pond and flew fast in a single direction.
The Prince Baskettail is the most common of the three dragonflies and I have featured in-flight shots of this species multiple times. The Prince Baskettail appears to have a portion of the shoreline as its territory and it flies back and forth, giving me multiple opportunities to get a shot. This dragonfly has amazing stamina and rarely seems to rest—in ten years of observing dragonflies, I have seen a perched Prince Baskettail only a couple of times.
The Russet-tipped Clubtail is a dragonfly that appears in the late summer and I usually spot one when it is hanging from the vegetation. This one was the first sighting for me of the species this season. Although the dragonfly never came close to the shore, the distinctive color of its “tail” made it easy for me to identify it, even when it was flying.
In case any of you are curious, I captured all of these images with my Canon 7D DSLR and my Tamron 18-400mm zoom lens. Sometimes I focus manually when trying to photographing dragonflies in flight, but I believe I used my camera’s autofocus for these shots with a group of nine focus points in the center selected.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 