"DEWING" A ONE HOUR PHOTO SHOOT

I had an hour to quickly kill early this morning, so I decided to head down to Hillman Marsh for a little walk with my camera.

It's the typical lazy days of summer with Great Blue Herons and Great Egrets stalking the marsh, while the odd Caspian Tern dives for fish when I got there. Happily, I was the only one there the whole time!

Butterflies were in pretty low numbers, I barely saw even a Cabbage White! Black Swallowtail, Bronze Copper, Orange Sulphur, Viceroy, a few Monarchs, Northern Crescent (I think), was pretty much all I saw....then again I was there really early in the morning..

Dew was everywhere, so I took advantage of it

Even some of the insects were covered in it!

Many damselflies were flying low covered in dew. Most of them seemed to be Eastern Forktails (above...I think), though I still find damselfly ID very challenging!!

Flowering Rush covered with dew.

A few dragonflies allowed for close photography including one very cooperative Lance-tipped Darner (above) which posed at ground level .
Male Widow Skimmer (above) and female (or imm. male) Yellow-legged Meadowhawk (below)

Other species of dragonflies included Common Whitetail, Green Darner, and Eastern Pondhawk...or at least these were the ones I could ID.

I'm really trying to branch out a little bit in other flora and fauna. Birds of course are my passion but I'm really starting to get into dragonflies now. Of course, having a great field guide helps out. I find that Dragonflies and Damselflies of Northeast Ohio is the best guide for me so far.

This has seemed to be a late summer though. I am finally starting to see more butterflies, and dragonflies in the past couple of weeks.....but then again, this has been an unseasonably cool summer so far!