Helmke Pond, Fresno County, CA, 6/11/06

On the weekend of June 10 and 11, 2006, my son, Steven, and I travelled to Kingsburg in Fresno County to see my parents. Sunday, June 11, we went looking for water and found Helmke Pond, east of Selma near Monmouth.

A male Familiar Bluet. Lots of these at Helmke Pond. This individual is dark and, judging from the wings, fairly old.

Another male Familiar Bluet.

And yet another . . .

Tule Bluets in tandem. The female is andromorphic (blue).

Tule Bluets in wheel. The female is gynomorphic.

Young male Variegated Meadowhawk, strikingly colored.

This picture (crop of above shot) has quite a bit of ambient light in it (the reason for the diffuse pale, not black, background). The ambient light is exposed at 1/200 of a second, while the flash duration is more like 1/1000 second. Because there is ambient light on the dragonfly (which is being exposed at the relatively slow shutter speed of 1/200 second), it took several tries to get reasonably steady, focused shot.