Damselfly Party

Did I ever tell you that I have more than one favorite place at the nature parks I visit? I probably did, but I'm telling it to you again. For some reason most of them are either on or close to bridges. This latest one I visited is no exception.

I won't show you the bridge this time, but I'm going to show you what I was looking at while I stood on the bridge. It was this little group of damselflies. I had to stop and watch them because I usually only see one at a time, but this time there several.

I guess this is the time of year for all the bugs to get their last business in before it gets too cold for them. These damselflies were just swarming the area around this little river. They moved so fast that it was hard to get any pictures at all. But there were so many that I got as many as I wanted.

Even three damselflies at a time was not out of the question. But they were always on the move. I had to be quick every time I clicked the shutter button on my camera. But there was something interesting about them that I noticed.

Ifa damselfly finds a spot that it likes it will fly away but then quickly come right back to that favored spot. I watched these do that multiple times so I was able to keep my camera pointed to that very same spot and get many pictures of them.

Here are the same three damselflies getting a little too close to each other, so they flew away again to their other leaves. I had many more pictures like these, but you probably only want to see three. I could have stood there all day looking down from the bridge at these dragonflies. But it's time for us to move on.

Nature is so full of interesting things to see, and so is the internet. We have a one of my favorite videos ever over at Nature Center Magazine today. It shows a whole year of a nature park in just a minute or two. So many things go by.

And over at Rat Tales I have the newest episode of A Haunted Soul. This one features a huge change for our lonely ghost. He now has some visitors that have come to the castle grounds, and they have come specifically to see him.

I'll be back next time with an all new everyday adventure. What will I bring you? What will we see? I don't know yet either. I hope it's something good!


Nature Center Magazine - Your starting place for nature!

The Great Snail Hunt

I've seen some strange little creatures on milkweed plants, and today I'm going to bring you some more. While I was closely examining a few more milkweed plants I found a strange little thing in the shadows of one plant.

At first I thought I had gotten lucky enough to find a cocoon of some sort, but the flash of my camera saw it for what it truly was. It was the shell of a snail! And guess what, people. That shell also had a snail inside. Wonder of wonders!

Seriously, this snail was tucked down on a plant that was in behind several other milkweeds. It was very dark, so I had a lot of trouble seeing just what I was looking at. The camera wasn't having much more success than I was, so I decided to use the flash. All of my previous experiments with that finally gave me this success, a bright clear picture of this snail.

Now I knew from previous experience with milkweed plants that if I found one critter on a milkweed then I would find others. So I began my search for more snails. And very soon I found exactly what I had been looking for.

Right out in the open there were more snails to be examined and studied. I'm not exactly sure anymore if I used the flash on these or not, but the pictures came out just fine.

One thing I've learned with using the camera's flash is that it takes out any motion blur that there might be. So now I've been experimenting with the flash at every opportunity I can get. I guess you never know something until you try.

So now we've come to my final picture of these snails. Three is a magic number so I try to use it as often as I can. Three pictures. Three blogs. Three... You get the idea. Three is a perfect balance. But you have to know how to use it.

So now after that last bit of mysterious strangeness we come to the end of this post. Do a search for the magic of the number three and see what you find. 1... 2... 3... Go!


Nature Center Magazine - The garbage man can!