Is There an Entomologist in the House?

Lately, this blog seems like online field notes, but the truth is I am spending a lot of time reading and thinking about bugs, especially dragonflies. The lake behind campus is replete with four-spotted pennants, or Brachymesia gravida, a type of skimmer. Identifying this species has been quite a challenge.

I took my first pictures of four-spotted pennants a couple of weeks ago. At the time, I didn't know their name. I found three color variations, and at first I mistakenly believed that I had found two new dragonfly species [new to me, at least]. One version I called [in entirely unscientific lingo] chocolate-blueberry:


The eyes do look like pools of Hershey's milk chocolate while the wings seem to have four chocolate fingerprints on them, as though God were snacking on Kisses while assembling these little guys, holding them up to study his handiwork. From a distance, the thorax and abdomen appear black, but once I got close enough, I noticed a blue tone, as if they were a fruit and chocolate blend.

None of the three dragonfly guide books I have recently purchased identify this particular species, so I was at a loss for a common/scientific name until I happened across a similar photo at Odonata Central. I now know that the above individuals are male four-spotted pennants, their coloring the giveaway. Once I had a name, I went to Bugguide.net to confirm the identity, and it was at this website where I realized that the second new dragonfly I had found at Lake Pamela was an immature male of the same species.

The second color variation looks like this:


The colors might be strikingly different, but I wasn't surprised to discover that they were the same species because the "chassis" of the two versions are identical. When I compare "chocolate-blueberry" above to these specimens, I notice the similar position and shape of the "headlights," the styling of the "passenger compartments," the identical amounts of "trunk" space. The immature male has the flashy colors of youth while the mature male has a "paint job" that indicates his elder statesman status.

Dragonflies, I've learned, go through dramatic color changes as they mature. I believe that for a four-spotted pennant, the "tweenie" version looks like this:


At first, I thought this duller-colored one might be a female, but after I looked more carefully, I noticed the "chocolate fingerprints" beginning to appear on the wings, the bright colors fading into shades that could darken to the blue-black of the mature male. That's my reasoned guess, anyway.

So where are the women? I haven't observed a single mating pair during my "field work." Female dragonflies don't hang out near the water; they only make an appearance to breed. Shorelines are male territory. I did spy this dragonfly in the woods beside the lake:


Her[?] coloring might indicate a female. Female scarlet and roseate skimmers, for example, are yellowish. I have observed no scarlet and roseate skimmers at the lake, though. I was hoping she[?] was a female four-spotted pennant, but Digital Dragonflies shows the chocolate fingerprints on the female as well as reddish eyes.

I wish I knew an entomologist, especially someone who knew odonata, as I get frustrated and confused!

Did I Learn Anything?

One blog I visit every weekday during lunch is Confessions of a Community College Dean. The author provides entertaining, work-related posts and has quite a large following, which makes the "comments" section a worthwhile diversion. Last week he spent one day complaining about the foreign language requirement at his school and the very next day arguing that typical college-level math classes were just as worthless for many AA-degree seekers. Those two posts—plus discovering a copy of my undergraduate transcript here in my office—made me think about my freshman year in college. I have concluded that although I must have learned a lot [I do remember reading, writing, taking exams, feeling great anxiety, etc.], I don't remember much of the content of the classes I took.

What I Remember Best, Fall Term, 1981

Elementary French: I can still picture the lovely silver-haired madame puffing on a cigarette as she stood in the door frame, blowing smoke into the empty hallway, while she proctored our exams or waited for us to scribble answers in our workbooks. I thought she was the epitome of cool and worried that I personally disappointed her whenever I failed to score a 100 on an assignment. The class was too easy for me—I should have taken Intermediate French—but the one section that was offered conflicted with Conversational Russian. The professor of that class, Colonel Ed, an authoritative ex-Marine, was also my academic advisor. He pressured me to take Russian every semester until he retired two years later.

Current knowledge of French = miniscule
Crush on teacher = immense

Precalculus Mathematics: Whenever my classmates and I were especially annoying in our mathematical ignorance, our nerdy professor turned to the blackboard and her scribbled formulae, lamenting that numbers were her only real friends. I remember that the first half of Precalculus was a repeat of high school math, so I quit attending regularly, as I was easily making As on exams. When the class began new material, I was not there to notice and never able to catch up. Thankfully, half a semester of As and half a semester of Fs averaged to a C+ for the course and the end of my math torture.

I would not know where to begin if someone put a first-day problem from Precalculus in front of me today. I do know that if I had a copy of the textbook, I could figure the problem out. As a student, I never read math textbooks. [Some of my undergrad professors would say I overwrote that last sentence, that math made it wordy.] But having taught myself over the years a number of new things without formal classroom training, I have learned that looking over printed explanations can usually provide the answer. I am a big fan of the For Dummies series.

Current knowledge of precalculus = zero
Likelihood I could figure it out, if motivated = high
Likelihood I would be motivated to figure it out = low

Conversational Russian: I still have a handful of ever-handy phrases—"Hello, how are you?" "Good." "Goodbye." "Do you speak Russian?" "Yes, I speak Russian." "Give me some black bread, please." "Thank you." If I were to listen all the way through "Katyusha," a Russian wartime song, I could probably sing it accurately at a karaoke bar. I remember having to sing "Katyusha" at least once every other class for five semesters.

Current knowledge of Russian = laughable
Likelihood I would embarrass myself at a karaoke bar = high

Essentials World Civilizations: I remember that I made the mistake of writing "The ancient Egyptians had a fetish about death" on an essay exam, and my professor circling fetish and snidely commenting that I needed to consult a dictionary to use the word correctly. I immediately understood that college professors, unlike high school teachers, wanted papers that had more than correctly spelled words. The professor for this class was a brilliant lecturer—even though PowerPoint wasn't invented, even though all he had was a collection of brightly colored flip maps at the front of the room—so I made the mistake of taking him again for Winter Term, one month of intensive study in a single class.

Current knowledge of ancient cultures = high [reinforced, though, by graduate work and self-study]
Opportunities to use fetish correctly in daily speech = few, alas

What I Remember Best, Winter Term, 1982

The Russian Revolution: Mesmerized by the melodic voice and scope of knowledge of Dr. Eaton, I took a senior-level history seminar winter term of my freshman year. I remember that I had to get his written permission to register. Dr. Eaton may have tried to dissuade me but signed the form in the end, despite the evidence that I didn't know how to use fetish correctly. Instead of a superficial textbook that covered all of human history as we had used in Essentials World Civilizations, I was assigned primary sources, like the writings of Trotsky and Lenin, or detailed historical analyses by highbrow scholars. I was in way over my head, afraid to say anything in a class full of anarchist history majors, afraid to ask for help after class and risk appearing stupid. We had a major research paper as our only grade. Of course, I had never written a research paper before, further proof of the poor public education in the South. I bought a handbook and puzzled out footnotes and the bibliography. Dr. Eaton gave me a generous B-, perhaps out of guilt from having signed the permission form in the first place. I don't even remember the subject of that 20-page paper.

Current knowledge of the Russian Revolution = too painful to determine
Inspiration after this class to become a history major = low

What I Remember Best, Spring Term, 1982

Freshman Rhetoric & Composition: I remember staring at the classroom door, waiting for the department secretary to poke her head in. She came often to say that our professor was blowing us off again but to begin the new essay even though we had no guidelines. "He says to tell you to read the handbook if you have any questions!" she would advise. Dr. Phillips was the resident Southern literature expert, so he found the one composition class he taught—us—a real drag, not really worth his time. To be perfectly honest, though, we didn't find the course worth our time either. The college mandated that the bad freshman writers take composition in the fall. We knew that our spring term placement meant that the college considered us the good freshman writers. We thought we already knew everything and wondered why no one had offered us a book contract yet.

Current knowledge of essay writing = high, no thanks to Dr. Phillips
Frequency of employing the techniques of Dr. Phillips in my own composition classes = never

World Religions: Far Eastern: Any chance that I would return to regular worship at the Methodist church ended after a semester of lively discussions with the professor of this class, the Dean of the Chapel. Finally, I thought, religions that made sense! Religions that offered logical explanations for the existence of suffering and imperfection! I loved the idea that we have many lives to fix mistakes and get things right, instead of being tossed into hell after sixty or so short years. As a poor college student struggling to pay for things, I loved the idea that all suffering is the result of wanting what we cannot have, and that we should try to stop the desire, not exhaust ourselves trying to satisfy it.

Current knowledge of far Eastern religions = high
Mom's worry that I would join a cult while taking the class = high

Elementary Russian:A typical class* went like this:

Colonel Ed: Hello, How are you?
A student: Good, thank you.
Colonel Ed: Do you speak Russian?
A different student: Yes, I speak Russian.
Colonel Ed: Would you like some black bread?
A third student: Yes, give me some black bread, please. Thank you.
Colonel Ed: [hitting play button on tape recorder] Okay, let's sing "Katyusha."
Students: [in unison] Расцветали яблони и груши,
Поплыли туманы над рекой ...
Colonel Ed: Goodbye!
Students: [in unison] Goodbye!

*translated from Russian

Current knowledge of Russian = greater than current knowledge of precalculus
Opportunities to ask a Russian speaker for black bread = zero

Elementary Spanish: To explain my third language in a single year, let me say that I fancied myself a writer/world traveler after college graduation and began the requirements [soon abandoned] of a foreign language major. I remember best that the professor for this class insisted that we clock in and out of the language lab, amassing a specific number of hours per week there. During one trip to a carrel with headphones, I discovered a tape with a recording of "Guantanamara," a famous Cuban song. Every future hour in the lab I spent listening exclusively to this song: finding the place on the tape, listening, rewinding, listening again, rewinding—you get the picture. If the lab staff heard the song escaping from my headphones every day I was there, no one confronted me to get on task.

Current knowledge of Spanish = un pocotito
Ability to pretend that I am paying attention in department meetings while I am in fact singing "Guantanamara" in my head = off the charts

Humanities: Classic to Romantic: I remember many things about the art, literature, and philosophy of the Classic and Romantic movements. I made many good friends in this class and spent all of my free time on campus discussing/debating the ideas and works we explored. This class ruled my spring semester. My strongest memory, however, is the frustration trying to please the two professors who taught the course. The first month, we listened to the philosophy professor [who paced on the conference table around which we sat]; then we took an essay exam which he graded. Everyone found it impossible to answer all of the questions in the time we were given. When Professor No. 1 returned the essays, he chastised us for not completing all of the exam. We cried that there was no way to write good essays for all of the questions. He countered that he didn't want essays, just answers. We sucked up our Cs and spent the next month listening to the literature professor who made up the second half of the team. At the end of his turn, we took our second exam. This time we didn't worry about titles, engaging introductions, carefully crafted thesis statements and the like; we just wrote answers—to all of the questions. When Professor No. 2 returned this set of exams, he chastised us for forgetting everything our composition classes had taught us about good writing. But Professor No. 1 said the answer, not the writing, was important, we cried. We could not convince the literature professor that we felt betrayed by the team-teaching experience and sucked up more Cs. For the final exam, we demanded that they make their expectations clear before we wrote that last time. I ended up with a B in the class, but I doubt that they even opened the blue books, basing their grades on some holistic evaluation of our overall performance, so they could watch TV.

Current knowledge of Classic/Romantic movements = high
Grade I should have received = A+

Looking back on that first year as an undergrad, I realize that it didn't really matter what I took. Having to weigh skipping a class against all the money tuition cost, having to be more responsible than any high school class ever required, having to please people who expected more of me than anyone else ever had, operating within and testing new boundaries, learning to please different personalities—those were the real lessons.

What I've Learned Doing Urban Nature Photography

When my focus is a picture of an insect or other very small creature, I can usually frame the shot so that no human artifact appears. This way, the viewer can't tell if I am in the middle of the Everglades National Park or sitting in the driveway of my front yard. When the subject is larger than a finger, the illusion of being deep in the wilderness is harder to create because evidence of urban life is everywhere. On Monday during my tramp around the lake behind campus, I happened upon a great egret, a stately though common-as-dirt bird found at most bodies of water. The egret still had its frilly mating plumage and perched upon a submerged branch. Here was the opportunity to take a swamp picture while I was three miles from Theme Park Mecca! But I was directly across from campus and couldn't help getting the loading dock in the shot:


Water birds will wing off at the first sign of danger, so I crept to a new spot to make undeveloped shoreline the background. I can reposition myself more easily with the 300 mm lens because my greater distance from the bird threatens it less. The only problem is that greater magnification means less depth of field. As the egret considered whether it should fly off, glancing over its shoulder for a safe place to land, I lost the necessary clarity for a good shot:


I stopped, waiting for the bird to feel safe and settle back on his perch. Finally, I was rewarded with a shot that I could say I took in the Everglades, even if I really didn't:


As I've said here before, I prefer fauna photographs with the creature showing a little attitude. Eventually, my patience won me this:


For me, what was just a typical bird picture becomes a shot worth viewing with that red tongue and shed feathers showing off some egret sass.

Ghosts and Goblins Six Months Early

Summer classes started on May 8 and will run through the beginning of August. For the past four or five years—as well as this summer—I have agreed to a rather bizarre schedule that has both great perks and drawbacks. During summer semester, students and faculty have a variety of scheduling options: a 6-week semester that begins in May and ends in the middle of June, a second 6-week semester that begins in June and ends in August, or a 12-week "full" semester. A full-time load is four classes—not the usual five—and most faculty opt for either four long-semester classes or four short-semester classes, two at the beginning of the summer and two more at the end. I, however, have both the best and worst of both worlds. I have two full-semester classes and then two short-semester classes that begin in June. This means that I have lots of free time currently but will really feel the crunch once the second short semester begins. The first half of the summer is always "project" time; if I am overhauling a course, updating assignments, creating something new, May and early June is when that work gets done.

I also have leisure to do some fun things. My goal last week was to bring the camera to campus every day. I planned to stroll around the lake once per day, looking for subjects to photograph. I anticipated another Lake Pamela series like the one this past November. I was going to discuss one new picture here every day: what I had learned in identifying the plant or animal, what I had observed about its behavior, what challenge I had faced getting the shot. I planned to be disciplined. I always over-schedule free time, though, and despite lugging the heavy camera to campus, I never got out to the lake. Yesterday, however, I finally managed the short hike at lunch time. It was a good trip; I have enough photos to write a whole week's worth of blog posts [something else I finally have the time to do!].

I hadn't been down to the lake to observe and photograph since a Saturday in early April when I accompanied Elizabeth back to campus for a presentation she got coerced into giving. On that trip, the lake was overrun with male blue dasher dragonflies:


Although I did spot a few yesterday, I was amazed at the high number of other species. According to Dragonflies [an excellent read], dragonfly species appear "in a predictable sequence." If this blog is acting in part as field notes, blue dashers are at their ascendancy here in Central Florida in late spring. Now at mid-May, a very common sight is Halloween pennants, Celithemis eponina, so named for their Halloween colors of black and orange—I spotted several at Mead Gardens on Sunday, many more at Lake Pamela yesterday. As a side note, Lake Como is still a battleground for blue dashers, Halloween pennants making only rare appearances.

The first Halloween pennant I photographed was exciting. I had admired pictures of this species at other photoblogs but had never seen—let alone digitally captured—a specimen myself. I look at that photo now and dismiss it as not very good. Lake Como, where I took the picture, is a well-groomed lake; the city keeps the grass neatly cut, and workers use weed wackers to tame the unruly plants at the shore, right down to the water's edge. I think the blue dashers are so combative because there are so few perching spots left once the maintenance crew finishes. The aggressive manicuring also means that artistic photographs are difficult to compose. Typically I have to shoot with water behind the subject or mud to the side, getting a hazy, unappealing blue, gray, or brown background [depending on water/sky/ground conditions].

Unlike the neighborhood lake near home, Lake Pamela is unkept and wild near the water. I keep my eyes out for snakes whenever I make the trip around; I always confirm that I'm not standing in a fire ant nest when I stop to shoot. Late last fall, the college hired a firm that came out in haz-mat suits and sprayed the lake shore with chemicals similar to Agent Orange, killing all of the plant life along the edge. But the shore has had several months to repair, and now three or four yards of vegetation on all sides of my subjects provides a much more artistic background. These are four males I captured yesterday, all at Lake Pamela:


I tweaked the amount of contrast on the one above, but the colors are accurate. I almost desaturated to tone down the colors but decided I really liked the vibrancy. This photo will definitely get posted at the photostream, titled something like "A Moment to Pray" or "Little Angel." Dragonflies are both hideous and beautiful; the angle of this shot hides the hairy legs and has the bug positioned like an angel in a Renaissance painting, hovering above some human action below.


This second one is just fun. The dragonfly looks as if he is on a carousel ride, twirling in circles. I imagine that I can see a smile on his face. The reality is that he was balancing and maintaining his perch as gusts of wind came off the lake.


No, this third Halloween pennant is not participating in a karaoke contest. When a dragonfly touches a surface with his feet, he instinctively pulls what he is grasping toward his mouth, usually to feed on the prey he has caught. But even a perch gets a similar embrace. Bad dragonfly table manners, I guess.


I could have cropped this last male much closer to the actual insect, but I like the dreamy grass background and the insight into perspective. If you click one of these images for the full-sized version, then the dragonflies on the computer screen are the size of birds; in reality, they are tiny creatures, this one balancing on a single blade of grass.

This last one is a Halloween pennant female, taken at Mead Gardens, not Lake Pamela. Notice that the wings are less colorful, although I like the lime green thorax more than the chocolate brown on the males.

The walk around the lake yesterday was very pleasant, the only problem an overzealous [new] security guard who came chasing after me in a golf cart, demanding identification. I should have told him to fuck off, as it is public property, not a military base. I had every right to take pictures as the college isn't [to my knowledge] burying nuclear waste behind the cafeteria as a favor to the President or receiving supplies at the loading dock to build weapons of mass destruction in the chemistry labs. But I was good and gave him my name so that he could radio the command center [a.k.a. the place where one gets parking stickers renewed] and confirm that I was an employee. "We spotted you near the water, ma'am, and needed to know what was going on," he explained. I guess suicides routinely throw themselves off the two-inch "cliff," drowning themselves in three feet of water with expensive cameras in hand.

Clash of the Titans

I walked down to the neighborhood lake yesterday, camera in hand. The shoreline was abuzz with dragonfly activity. I sat six or seven feet away from the dried stalk of a water plant, watching the action. I observed that even though the human housing bubble might be about to burst, dragonflies still prized certain perches and fought like yuppies competing in a bidding war over a choice piece of trendy real estate.

Initially, the perch in question was "home" for a male blue dasher. He, however, was constantly challenged by other individuals of his species for ownership of the stick. Notice the tips of the abdomens curving up, signs of male dragonfly aggression:


I know these are males because of their coloring; female blue dashers aren't blue. A perch like this one allows the male to position himself in defense of his water territory. Here he waits ... and fights off intruders ...


And waits a while longer ... and fights off more intruders ... and waits until a female ready to mate finally arrives. She will lay her eggs directly in the water—or in plants in the water [depends on the species]—so the male must have a choice spot picked out for her.


Eventually, an aerial battle distracted the blue dasher long enough for a new squatter to arrive, a lovely scarlet skimmer. When I first showed these photos to Elizabeth, she asked, "Is there really a dragonfly that color?" thinking, I guess, that I had tweaked the color with a graphics program.


Slightly larger than the blue dasher, the scarlet skimmer fiercely defended that stick for the 30 or so minutes I sat there. Notice his abdomen fully tilted up as he signals his unwillingness to give up the territory. His posture looks like the dragonfly equivalent of Mr. Miyagi's "crane" karate pose, open but deadly:


Elizabeth pointed out the similarity between this dragonfly battle and the epic clash of Obi Wan Kenobi [who weilds a blue light sabre] and Darth Vader [with his red light sabre] in Star Wars.


Bear with me here!

"I've been waiting for you, Obi Wan. We meet again at last."

"The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner; now I am the master."

"Only a master of evil, Darth."

"Your powers are weak, old man."

"You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!"

Photographing Dragonflies

When I first bought my camera, I had little luck photographing dragonflies. They like to land on water plants offshore, and the zoom feature of my first two lenses couldn't get me close enough for a good shot. Here in Florida, television news anchors love to report that another brain-sucking amoeba has traveled up a careless swimmer's nose, landing the poor soul in an irreversible coma, so walking into lake water to bridge the distance between me and the subject was so not an option.

Any dragonfly photo I took in 2005 was just plain lucky. I always assumed my subjects were either newly emerged or dying, their pristine or tattered wings the proof. Their vulnerability gave them no choice but to tolerate my proximity. But my newest lens, a 300 mm, allows me to sit at the water's edge and bring the water plants and their perchers right to me, dry and comfortable on the shore. With the magic of magnification, getting close enough to a dragonfly is no longer the challenge:



The ability to bridge the physical distance does not, however, automatically make a good picture. Dragonflies have sparkling wings, big shiny eyes, and other smooth, light-reflecting body parts. As we have had a record-setting stretch of cloudless, rain-free days, the blinding sun and polished subjects often make nothing but ugly glare.

I am willing to shoot 50 pictures of the same insect, though, and with a little luck, one of every three or four bugs will reward me with a good picture. Down at Lake Como, the closest body of water to the house, the majority of dragonflies are male blue dashers. The females, I've learned, remain inland until they are ready to mate, so it's a real frat house down at the water as the males aerial battle for perches. They wait for a willing female to enter their "house" where they have a "bed," a water territory, they are defending.


Patrolling the land between the shore and the busy road that the lake interrupts are the aptly-named Carolina saddlebags. Notice the "saddlebag" spots on the hind wings:


I have spotted an occasional Halloween pennant close to water:


If I hunt carefully near the water's edge, I can find the damselflies, the second type of Odonata, veritable needles in the grass.


I try to keep the sun at my back; I try to use the shade of a cypress tree as a natural hood for the lens to reduce glare. I try to frame the shot so that a bright orange road construction sign isn't the background for the dragonfly. But a willing subject perched for his portrait can so inspire my finger to mash the shutter button that the little I know about good photography is quickly forgotten, and I arrive home with a bunch of useless crap.