Dragonflies, butterflies, something else, and some water.

[wfooshee]

We've had a bit of rain here in north Florida this summer. I've had trouble keeping my lawn trim, as it's been too wet, and some of it has remained under water for weeks at a time. We don't have any serious flooding, nobody's been driven from their homes, but it's rained enough to keep EVERYTHING wet, and just as you think it's getting dry enough to do stuff, it rains again. I think we had 5 inches a week for 6 or 8 weeks from June into August, and only slightly less since then. This week we had 3 days in a row with no rain!

Anyway, I was able to get out to my local nature place, St. Andrews State Park, and look for stuff. I couldn't navigate the first trail, it was flooded. Another of my hangouts had nothing at all going on. I could hear the birds out there in the bushes and trees, but nobody showed their face. I wandered over to Gator Lake (yes, they really call it that) but I had to take an alternate trail as the normal one was now part of the lake itself.

Just as I was giving up and ready to head home, I found some insects to shoot near the beach pavilion, and then after that things started looking up.

First things I did before being turned back by my flooded trail was shoot some dragonflies. I got some perched, and tried to get some in flight.

This one was settled in the shade so I had to use a flash:


This guy was sunning:


I wandered over to the lake to see what I could find there, and found my trail cut a bit short. I found an alternate route along the hillside to the right of this path.


Once I got there, I found nothing to shoot. Well, that's a lie. Here's a Pied-Billed Grebe at the very limit of the reach of my 70-300 lens (or maybe further,) in a 1-to-1 crop of the center of the frame. He was near the island seen in the next image.


I had only the 70-300 with me so I couldn't take a wide shot to show the flooding. I took a series and stitched them, though, and here it is. 2 rows of 4 frames:


For comparison, here's the water level I'm used to seeing here, shot in early June, before the rains started:


Next, I wandered over to the place most folks go when they come to the park, the beach pavilion. The walkway to the beach from the parking lot covers a good bit of oppen ground, with a lot of bird and insect activity nearly all the time.
I've shot these before, but never bothered looking them up to identify them. Now I have. This is the Western Gulf Fritillary.






No clue what this one is, but he was tiny, and in the shade, so I used the flash. His little beady eye reflected it back at me.


Lastly, I finally managed to get a couple of in-flights of dragonflies. This first one is at 1/125th, 4.5 meters away, 300mm, manually focused.


This one was 1/250th, 3.6 meters away, 195mm, and hovered long enough for me to actually get an auto-focus and run an 8-frame sequence, of which this is the best frame. This is the ONLY time I've ever been able to auto-focus an in-flight bug! (Yay, D7000!)

[Grandpaw]

Nice series of photos. You nailed the last one. :thumbsup::thumbsup: Jeff

[Mike T]

nice shots, the last little butterfly is some sort of skipper. The first dragofly is male Blue Dasher, the second is a male Eastern Pondhawk. The in flight one is a Common Green Darner.