Dragonfly

When I was a kid, my brother told me that dragonflies would eat their own tails if they could - I found this really gross and since then have been somewhat repulsed by dragonflies.


Anyway. I should be happier to see them, as apparently they eat mosquitoes - which is good! They are of the Odonata order, and "the suborder Epiprocta or, in the strict sense, the infraorder Anisoptera" (from Wikipedia).

I still don't find them particularly attractive - most insects are kind of alien and creepy to me - but the intricacy of their design is still quite fascinating.


In terms of identifying the dragonfly, I don't know what kind it is - but it does look similar to the Yellow Winged Darter, or Sympetrum flaveolum.

Tiger Orchid and Dragonfly

Just a short one. There will more pictures of the my parents-in-law's blossoming Tiger Orchid, or Rossioglossum grande later on, but the other night there were two dragonflies on it for some reason. And I found out that a flash at night can have a useful effect sometimes (the black background).