More Of The Same And All Out Of Luck

At the pond today, flying endlessly back and forth but never stopping to rest were at least a dozen mating pairs of Black Saddlebags, at least 3 pairs of Carolina Saddlebags, a pair of Common Whitetails 2 large Darners.... You name it they were flying around. Flying, not stopping. So what did I get today?

I did snatch one useable snap of  one Black Saddlebag pair. Again setting the camera to rapid fire and manual focus as the auto isn't fast enough. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't and today this was all I got for 100+ shots.

There were plenty of dragons perched around the place but I'm looking for those hard to get species now. I've got lots of-

Needhams Skimmers

Slaty Skimmers

and Halloween Pennants

But I so wanted those mating Carolina Saddlebags today.

Outside of dragons we have butterflies

Our state butterfly the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail and the old familiar, both sides of the Atlantic Red Admiral.

This years big Yellow and Black Argiope  Argiope aurantia has shed another skin and is about 2"across the legs now still with room to grow I think and has survived a couple of major rainstorms tucked amongst whats left of the springs iris show.

This huge fly about an inch across the wings is Xenox tigrinus the Tiger Beefly. Very impressive and I learned a new word thanks to this beast. The Tiger Beefly larva is parasitic on Carpenter Bees. Notr just your average parasite but a parasitoid. That is "an insect that in the larval stage feeds off of the tissues of its host (as does a parasite), but this feeding normally results in death of the host. Thus a parasitoid is in some ways a predator as well". It pay to increase your word power... parasitoid.

Likely the next post will be coming from Luray VA and the Banished family vacation

Oh! And this is post number 100