On Lying on Vegetation and Earth on the Margin of Pond and Woods: An Ode Hunter's Prayer

Please please please don't let me be lying in poison ivy!


Azure Bluets preparing to mate, interrupted by an ant

Note: no poison ivy, but a nymph tick embedded itself in my back.

So much for prayer!

Appetites

1.
I returned to the small pond today, hoping to see the Unicorn Clubtail. I did, but it dodged me and my camera. I am ravenous for new odonates.

2.
One new sight I wish I hadn't seen was an emergent Comet Darner, whose abdomen never fully emerged from the exuvia. All of the mature color had already set it, indicating the darner had been there some time. I wonder if I will see it again tomorrow, or if, by then, someone will have eaten it.

3.
This Amber-winged Spreadwing snagged breakfast and ate it quickly as I filmed it. All gone within just a couple of minutes. He looks small and thin, but the fuel he requires for the hard work of flying and mating is large, as his appetite.

So Early in the Season

but in three hours today at Lake Cheston and the small Day Lake Road pond, I saw 24 species: Comet Darner, Common Green Darner, Carolina Saddlebags, Southern Sprite, Eastern Amberwing, Common Whitetail, Common Baskettail, Eastern Pondhawk, Widow Skimmer, Spangled Skimmer, Golden-winged Skimmer, Slaty Skimmer, Blue Corporal, Blue Dasher, Lancet Clubtail, Fragile Forktail, Violet Dancer, Powdered Dancer, Calico Pennant, Banded Pennant, Double-ringed Pennant, Azure Bluet, Amber-winged Spreadwing, and one county record -- the Unicorn Clubtail.

This is going to be a very good year indeed.

Along the Margins

Standing, pole firmly planted in the mud where I slipped and fell, I slipped toes into water, leaning, leaning, leaning out to the yoke where the damselflies hung, they on the margin of plant, I on the margin of the pond.

And then I heard from the drive on the margin of the pond's other side, up through dead branches and new leaves, Did you like see him like last night? I mean like he was so like drunk he was . . . [laughing] . . . vomiting like puking chunks like all over his like shirt . . . [laughing]. And then Yeah like I've never like been that s***-faced like before like wow man and he shifted his 12-pack to the other hand, as they walked on to the graduation party.

Nothing disturbs the Southern Spreadwings, deaf as they are, alert to movement, and nothing disturbs me standing  -- still, reaching.

Another Spreadwing Kind of Day

This time, the Southern Spreadwings took their morning sun at the Day Lake Road Pond, wherever they could find it and however thin.

A Long Conversation

with a fellow who lives across from Day Lake wandered from talk of Mr. Cheston, Little Mountain, cattle, horses, celebrating seniors and their parents leaving garbage at Day Lake, the crew team, his grandchildren, our mutual love of the land, dragonflies and damselflies . . . and then this happened: the Great Blue Skimmer I had seen flying behind and above the gentleman's head floated down right between us and we both took long looks.

Do they come from something like caterpillars? he asked.

More like cicadas, I said.

Oh, he said, those are the shells I see right around the water.

Yup, I said.

Ain't they pretty?

I couldn't agree more.

Even on a Day without Sun

it's easy to be surprised, stunned even, by the beauty of the world as it is, even when it isn't as it should be or as one might like it.

I am grateful for small gifts.

Teeming

defined: hundreds of Azure Bluets in mating frenzy.

Number 22

A whopper year for Odonates! Just added number 22 to the list of distinct damselfly species I've identified on the Domain of Sewanee: the Slender Spreadwing. Woohoo!

Stillness

The pond
in morning
teems
with hawking
defending
attacking
mating
ovipositing.
Frogs yelp and splash,
one green heron ack-acks,
and a small airplane
flies over, out and back,
sightseeing, I suppose.

That's what I was doing:
seeing the sights,
including this female
Amber-winged Spreadwing,
contentedly
steadily
hanging from a branch
tipped by a Slaty Skimmer,
Auzure Bluet,
and Blue Dasher.
The dragonflies push
off, bouncing the branch,
but she remains still.

I still approach,
close enough to
make eye contact.