Another old friend makes an appearance at the pond. I have been waiting for the Spread-winged Damselflies to arrive. I first noticed them several years ago here after the pond had been drained and dredged. Dragonfly populations increased significantly after that work. The spread-winged damselfly spreads its wings somewhat like a dragonfly, rather than folding them over its back like a typical damselfly. Even so, the wings tend to droop a bit, and the damselfly flutters about rather than perform the acrobatics of dragonflies. They are large, too, for a damselfly, nearly 3 inches.  In this particular photograph, I dodged and added saturation to the eyes, a striking part of this insect.

Image taken with a Nikon D90 and a Nikkor 70-300mm AF-S ED VR. I find that the 300mm works nicely with dragonflies. The 300mm focal length is a useful length to get close without spooking, yet they are large enough to fill the frame decently at that length. A little cropping is necessary but wel within tolerances for image integrity. There a quite a number of affordable Nikon 300mm zoom lenses to choose from (see our review), and all but the cheapest is very good. I have come to prefer this one for the vibration reduction–very useful when full out at 300mm.

Spreadwing Damsel Wings

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