Insects too…

While bird watching at Reifel that day there was an abundance of insects buzzing, flitting and flying around.

These two dragonflies (above and below) looked very similar to me, but identifying dragonflies seems a little tricky and my google searches did not give me any clues as to what variety I captured.

I like how they grab onto a branch or stalk of something and keep their bodies horizontal. If that were a human that would take incredible abdomen control (and I guess they’re a little lighter on their bottom halves than we are ~ lol!)

These black and white winged guys were everywhere. My educated, google assisted guess identifies this as an eight spotted skimmer. I wish I had a better picture of this guy, the POV doesn’t bring out the best in his wings. Plus I seem to have a challenge on focussing on the whole insect, as I found most of my shots would be clear in the head and fuzzy in the body or vice versa. I was shooting these little guys with my telephoto so that could have been part of my problem. Perhaps I should have opened my aperture a little more… I’ll have to experiment more with this.

I thought this little blue guy above was a dragonfly, but it turns out it’s a damselfly … a Common Blue Damselfly perhaps. Kind of looks a little alien.

I love the Swallowtail butterfly, with it’s fuzzy black and yellow body and the splash of blue and orange at it’s posterior.  I found this beauty at the entrance to Reifel, hanging out with the ducks, grabbing a drink of water.  I was astounded at the variety of Swallowtail butterflies there are out there, but I am guessing this could be the Western Tiger Swallowtail.