I’ve posted photos from Tower Grove Park before but most are not available because they got deleted with their posts when I started over last year.
All my post from Tower Grove Park have been similar because I go there specifically to photograph dragonflies; if I find anything else of interest so much the better. Also, on my last three or four visits to the park I have taken the Nikkor 80-400mm zoom lens instead of the 105mm macro. I’ve mentioned before that the lotus flowers and see pods are in a number of very small ponds on the east side of the larger, main pond. The stalks and seed pods that attract the dragonflies for perching are a few feet from then bank. This makes leaning out to get a picture with a short lens very precarious. The 80-400mm zoom handles this nicely, but still generally requires some cropping.
Okay, so I said I go to Tower Grove Park specifically to photograph dragon flies but the first thing I saw was a painted lady so that’s the first thing you’re seeing too. I’ve already said what I think of the name painted lady for a butterfly in a post last month (Painted Lady) so I won’t go into that again.
The shot below is a perfect example of one of the easiest and quickest ways to tell a dragonfly from a damselfly. When at rest dragonflies hold their wings out, away from and perpendicular to their body. If this were a damselfly its wings would be folded in and aligned parallel with its body. That tidbit was just another example of me giving you just a little more than what you’ve paid for.
A photo of the back an insect, or I guess any animal for that mater, is generally not that interesting. I’ve done it twice with dragon flies in this post. The first time because I liked the wings and this time because I liked the wings and the shadow on the leaf.
Thank you for stopping by.
David
It's Complicated 
Nice shots, David. As it happens, one of the few dragonflies I am familiar with by name, is what looks to be your (male) Blue Dasher, Pachydiplax longipennis, in the shots above. I find them fairly common in western Mass and pretty cooperative especially for dragons. Which are of course fascinating as far as insects go, but a bit troublesome for someone with a reverse lens set up — they’re too big!
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Thanks for the id. I thought they might be blue dashers because I’ve seen them identified on other blogs but I was just too lazy to try and verify. They’re very common in the Midwest also. I’d forgotten about how much magnification you get with the reverse lens; the dragonflies would be too big but you could get some good shots of their interesting looking heads. Years, actually decades, ago I had a Minolta SRT-101 SLR. It came with a 55mm f/1.8 lens. I bought a bellows extension for it and used the reverse technique for extreme macros. Obviously I couldn’t do anything hand held with it so I ended up getting a copy stand too. There were very few small objects in my house that were same from being photographed with that set up.
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All beautiful captured David.
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Thanks John.
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Another set of stunning images David, I’m familiar with the Painted Lady we have them in the UK as well.
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Thank you. Maybe ours came from your side of the Atlantic.
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The Painted Lady is a resident of the US, it migrates from the south in spring to northern states. In the UK ours come from North Africa through Europe, some years we see very few.
Fascinating butterfly.
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These photos are great!
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Thank you very much for your comment! I was rummaging around my WordPress Dashboard a few minutes ago and found your comment (and one from a regular follower commenting on a different post) in the spam section. That is why there has such a long time between you making the comment and my thank you. Not sure why either comment was in spam but I guess I should start checking it regularly.
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I had to start checking the spam folder regularly, too, because sometimes my friends’ comments end up there 😊😉😊
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