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Oxymoronic Feather
Bozeman, Montana
2021

It’s not actually the feather itself that’s oxymoronic; rather it’s that they call this fluffy stuff at the base of the quill “downy barbs”.

Crow Barbs
Bozeman, Montana
2021

For some reason I got to wondering what the parts of a feather are called. These intricate, parallel, structures on either side of the center quill are called barbs. I wonder how many individual barbs there are on all the feathers on a crow?

Dunkin’ Crow-Nuts
Bozeman, Montana
2021

If you feed crows bread that’s too hard and crusty, they prefer to soak it in water a bit before eating it. Perhaps they learned that trick from watching raccoons?

Look at Me When I’m Talking to You!
Bozeman, Montana
2021

Cattail Drama Part 5
Bozeman, Montana
2021

Finally, after a rest to dry out his wings, our hero struggles into the air, bits of pond scum still dangling from his legs. Another dragonfly appears to accompany him, perhaps to try and keep him out of trouble in the future.

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.