Insect Love

I found myself home alone for a short while Sunday afternoon. It was too cool out to read in the hammock, and when I tried to work on a writing project in the sunroom, I kept getting distracted by dragonflies whizzing by the windows. I had just been to an all-day insect class, and I couldn't just sit there without going out to try to catch them.

Darners fly fast and high, and after chasing them for a time, catching only one Canada darner, I wandered around the yard to see what else was about. I caught a small orange and black butterfly, but didn't think of taking its picture before I let it go. And then this white admiral posed for a some pictures.

As I walked through the grass, I saw a pair of little blues mating, but when I crouched down to take their picture, they fluttered away. When I looked around to see where they had gone, I discovered they had landed on my pants leg.

I was able to take several pictures, and got a good look at the orange spots on their hind wings, the dark charcoal shade of the female's upper wing surface and the iridescent purple-blue of the male's. I even saw the faint hair-thin "tail" that gives them their name--Eastern Tailed Blue.

And still they kept at it. After a while I got a little bored and moved them to a nearby clover plant and went in to get my journal. I sketched them and wrote about them and finally, finally, they began wiggling around, grasping leaves, trying to uncouple, which took several more minutes.

And then I caught one more dragon, this Black-Tipped Darner, before getting back to work.