August 2021

Cattail Drama Part 4
Bozeman, Montana
2021

But wait! Our hero, left for dead, has somehow managed to drag himself to safety.

Cattail Drama Part 3
Bozeman, Montana
2021

Did the newcomer try and help the downed dragonfly? No, he took advantage of the situation to help himself to the willing female. And because three’s a crowd, even if one is dying, they fly off linked together in their passion.

Cattail Drama Part 2
Bozeman, Montana
2021

Another dragonfly flies over, observing the situation while the protagonist struggles weakly in the muck.

Cattail Drama Part 1
Bozeman, Montana
2021

One exception to my observation that dragonflies rarely land for longer than a second or two apparently occurs during mating. Although dragonflies can mate in the air while flying, the activity often starts with the female stationary. A voyeur photographer such as myself can take advantage of this fact to get some easy shots with a better success rate than photographing them while they’re flying.

This Cattail Drama series covers a time period of 4-5 minutes during which quite a story unfolds. In this first shot, a hapless male ended up in the water after a brief struggle with a female he was attempting to get to know better. For all appearances he was done for.

Views From the Pond #6
Bozeman, Montana
2021

I mentioned before that the dragonflies at our pond rarely seem to land anywhere, making them hard to photograph. While they spend the great bulk of their time in the air, on some days they do seem to spend a lot of time hovering. This gives me a reasonable chance to photograph them in action. It’s still a difficult task though as they hover for a few seconds at most. But if I am quick with the camera and the auto-focus actually locks on in time, I can get a few shots off before the target moves on. The other day I sat there for about an hour during which I saw lots of hovering episodes. Out of several hundred photos taken, a handful were reasonably sharp.

Views From the Pond #5
Bozeman, Montana
2021

Most of the time we see the pond’s resident frog sitting fully on top of the pond scum. On this day he seemed content to barely poke his head out. Perhaps he was trying to lurk inconspicuously in order to be better able to snap up unsuspecting bugs who might happen by.

Views From the Pond #4
Bozeman, Montana
2021

This is my office/studio when I’m working remotely from the pond. It’s Covid-free and comes with many perqs.

Views From the Pond #3
Bozeman, Montana
2021

Cattails fight with the pond scum for dominance in the pond. We prefer the cattails ourselves but even at that we’d rather they didn’t take over every square inch, which they would do if we didn’t clear them out regularly.

Views From the Pond #2
Bozeman, Montana
2021

The dam of our pond seeps a lot of water, which the willows growing just below it thrive on. These branches overhanging the bench provide welcome shade in the morning hours.

Views From the Pond #1
Bozeman, Montana
2021

I sometimes sit on a bench at our small pond and watch the goings on. Often I have my camera with me so I decided to start a little series of images taken from the bench or elsewhere around the pond.

There are a lot of dragonflies zooming around our pond this time of summer but I can sit there for a long time without ever seeing one land anywhere for more than a second or two. This one however was taking a rest (perhaps a precursor to that longest rest of all). Whatever its situation, it was not interested in flying, although it half-heartedly relocated a foot or two away when I bugged it too much.