Dragonfly in Waterlily Gardens

Here's one of the many frequent visitors to the Waterlily Gardens. A beautiful Blue Dasher, as Steve would say at Shooting My Universe. Not everyone would, but I consider Steve to be one of the consummate Dragonfly photographers here in the States. Why? Well, he's photographed a few!

The Waterlilies were aplenty as I walked around the Waterlily Gardens at Gibbs. Such vivid color, such glorious shapes, such a beautiful setting. I simply must go back. I think I see a trip on the horizon in Spring, when the fields of Gibbs are covered in thousands of Daffodils, and the gardens are laden with every color Tulip one can conjure up in one's mind. Well, I am a tad under the weather so I haven't left comments this week, but I sure did check out everyone's beautiful posts and they were just that, beautiful. I hope you enjoyed my walk in the Waterlily Gardens, and the beautiful specimen I chose to feature today, as much as I enjoyed sharing it. ENJOY!

Linking to Foodie Friday & Everything Else

Gulf Fritillary

Today was the perfect day to spend the afternoon at Cheekwood Botanical Gardens photographing mums and such. This was my third meetup group gathering to discuss photography. Everyone is so receptive and asks tons of questions and I love being able to help all of them take better nature photography. While we were in the Robinson Color Garden which was filled with mums in every color of the rainbow it seemed, I happened upon this butterfly that had me perplexed as I hadn't seen one before that I could recall.

And by the way, isn't it gorgeous!

After I returned home I Googled butterflies and discovered it is a Gulf Fritillary. It lives and migrates from Argentina and Mexico across the Gulf of Mexico into the southern United States and southern California. Hence its name Gulf Fritillary. In its larvae stage it is poisonous. Notice the black and white stripes. Those are to warn predators of its toxicity and apparently they do a good job as most birds stay away.

One of the things I readily noticed when I was taking these images was its wing span which is quite wide and not common.

Look at that wing span. Seriously, wide.

I wished I could have gotten an image of its under wing which is buff with large silvery spots, but this little guy wasn't haven't none of that. I will be back soon with more images from my visit to Cheekwood today. I hope you are enjoying your weekend. It has been gorgeous here most of the week. I think often of the folks in South Carolina experiencing major flooding. This past year has been notorious for flooding, tornadoes and wildfires. ENJOY!

Blue Damselfly

As I photographed this beautiful specimen of a Blue Damselfly in September of last year near Richart Lake in Mustatatuck, I wasn't sure if I really liked the image.

But some post processing to the background proved to enhance the Damselfly and bring out the soft blues in the insect. And I have to admit I was always in love with this composition. While the Blue Damselfly is very common, I don't often see them. Perhaps I'm not really looking. Thankfully, he spent a brief few seconds resting on this beautiful wildflower near the water's edge. Hope you have something fun planned this week. The ice that blanketed our area late last evening has since melted. We should have some temps in the 50's this weekend and some sun. ENJOY!