No Wrapping Required

Even though this is the end of December, we have been averaging temperatures in the high 70s for several days. Sometimes I get anxious that global warming will make my inland home beachfront property in a couple of years. But then I consult Weather Underground, where I see that the record for December 21—set in 1954, long before Al Gore and his Inconvenient Truth—is 85 degrees, even higher.

So I have been out with the camera, hoping to get a big enough "cushion" of photographs to last through the usually bleak January and first part of February. Butterflies galore are nectaring at year-round flowers like pentas; the hibiscuses aren't melting in the heat as they do during the summer; and bees are plentiful. So I have found many willing subjects for the photostream. I didn't have any hopes for dragonflies, though, as their season, I thought, had come to an end.

Then a gift landed from the sky and perched on a pruned stick:


Maybe the beautiful weather inspired this roseate skimmer to leave his aquatic life at the lake and take to the air. Maybe dragonflies are year-round in Florida, just harder to find in the cooler months. Whatever the explanation for his presence, I enjoyed the addictive hunt for the perfect portrait.



I hope he gets a week or two of good temperatures so that he can darken to the pinks and purples of a mature male, eat many tasty insects, and find himself a good woman.