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Five-striped Leaftail

Gallery: Macro & Close-upPosted July 21, 2011129 views8 comments

Occurs in southern Texas and Louisiana. A fairly large & showy dragonfly in the club-tail family.
I have a shot of this Leaftail Dragonfly after it snatched a bee, but could not get a good angle on it. I watched it devour the bee over a period of about 3 minutes, with body parts falling left & right

F/20, 1/160th, ISO 500, 1D M3, 300mm f/2.8 + Kenko 2x extender. Cropped to 5.9MB

Comments

8 comments

Comment posted by Ray Whitt on July 21, 2011 at 7:36 PM

Beautiful Howard, love the pose. Excellent detail.

Ray

Registered on May 27, 2011, 92 Posts, 2619 Comments

Comment posted by Fabio Giarrizzo on July 22, 2011 at 10:58 AM

Great detail, DOF and colours on this one, Howard- You have a lot of great DF species- Excellent job, Fabio

Registered on December 3, 2010, 90 Posts, 1614 Comments

Comment posted by Roger Leekam on July 22, 2011 at 11:00 AM

Superb detail yet again, Howard. Thanks for your comment on my image. I started shooting dragonflies in flight this year, for which you were the inspiration (& I'm sure I'm not the first). Very much enjoy your website.

Registered on May 28, 2009, 83 Posts, 646 Comments

Comment posted by Charlie Baugh on July 22, 2011 at 11:14 AM

Superb portrait of this dragonfly, Howard. I see little (actually nothing) I'd wish for if this were mine. The perch, bg, details, etc. As already said you have a variety of these insects beyond what we see here.

Registered on April 18, 2011, 329 Posts, 1985 Comments

Comment posted by Howard Cheek on July 22, 2011 at 11:21 AM

Hi Charlie,
It's the pond and run-off area as I always have a small amount of water flowing in & out. I've created a small marshy area downhill where they are breeding. The other evening at sunset I looked to the sky & watched 100-200 DF's swarming..Something I haven't seen before..

Registered on July 24, 2008, 1201 Posts, 10758 Comments

Comment posted by John Kerr on July 23, 2011 at 11:21 PM

Great photo here Howard. Wonderful detail and color.

Registered on October 28, 2009, 111 Posts, 1070 Comments

Comment posted by Gary Yeoh on July 24, 2011 at 9:36 PM

Howard:
We have a similar DF with slightly different coloring in HK. They look really majestic when they fly and although they look intimidating, I have seen smaller DF chase them. The details here are fabulous. Also like the shadow of wing pattern on the perch.

Looks like you are having a great DF season this year.

Registered on September 1, 2009, 588 Posts, 8184 Comments

Comment posted by Tom Lusk on July 25, 2011 at 9:36 AM

Wow! The detail in this shot really gives me a high standard to strive for.

Thanks for posting this.

Registered on September 17, 2005, 312 Posts, 600 Comments