On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Good Morning All,
This weekday feature is for Juicers who are are on the road, traveling, or just want to share a little bit of their world via stories and pictures. So many of us rise each morning, eager for something beautiful, inspiring, amazing, subtle, of note, and our community delivers – a view into their world, whether they’re far away or close to home – pictures with a story, with context, with meaning, sometimes just beauty. By concentrating travel updates and tips here, it’s easier for all of us to keep up or find them later.
So please, speak up and share some of your adventures and travel news here, and submit your pictures using our speedy, secure form. You can submit up to 7 pictures at a time, with an overall description and one for each picture.
You can, of course, send an email with pictures if the form gives you trouble, or if you are trying to submit something special, like a zipped archive or a movie. If your pictures are already hosted online, then please email the links with your descriptions.
For each picture, it’s best to provide your commenter screenname, description, where it was taken, and date. It’s tough to keep everyone’s email address and screenname straight, so don’t assume that I remember it “from last time”. More and more, the first photo before the fold will be from a commenter, so making it easy to locate the screenname when I’ve found a compelling photo is crucial.
Have a wonderful day, and enjoy the pictures!
Folks, before today’s fare, a quick note about the form – it works again! It was using a bad source for verifying your commentor identity and so failed for more and more folks over time. This HAS been fixed, so please do submit pictures you may have submitted but never ran. I’ve run every set of pictures that came in from the form except for pictures today or yesterday. Basically, form-submitted pictures from early on until this week, if your picture never ran, do re-submit.
Ok, onto today’s glory.
Today, pictures from valued commenter Schlemazel.
SPent a day hiking Monson Lake State Park in West Central MN. I have never seen a swarm of dragonflies, generally they are solitary creatures in my experience. We walked over a mile thought clouds of them. Unfortunately the weather was mostly gray and overcast so the pictures are not great but you will get the idea
A shot against the sky
Taken on 2018-05-27
Monson Lake State Park, MN
everyone of those black dots is a dragonfly & there are more that that don’t show up well
better background
Taken on 2018-05-27
Monson Lake State Park, MN
got a little break from the rain
on a bush
Taken on 2018-05-27
Monson Lake State Park, MN
hard to see unless you zoom in
And a brief video of the swarm, may require download.
Just wonderful. Dragonflies are some of my favorite creatures on this world. Besides their obvious life flying around, they spend a lot of time growing in water, and as a longtime koi pond owner who cleans it out by hand, I’m very familiar with their water stage. I admire dragonflies a lot and have art and decorative items adorned with them.
Although not quite as awe-inspiring as your clouds, I did encounter, two years running, a pond in Colorado where rival species (colors!) of dragonflies lived and battled. And I mean battled. Spearing each other, swarm-attacking lone wanderers, waiting for newly-emerged dragonflies drying off before first flight, just crazy air combat. I got some video and a few pictures, so I’ll try to dig them up and share. These are very amazing creatures, but I fear that pond’s life may have been wiped out during a fire and its aftermath. I know it’s walk-in-only now.
Thank you so much Schlemazel, do send us more when you can.
Travel safely everybody, and do share some stories in the comments, even if you’re joining the conversation late. Many folks confide that they go back and read old threads, one reason these are available on the Quick Links menu.
One again, to submit pictures: Use the Form or Send an Email
p.a.
So cool!
satby
Very cool! Someone once told me dragonflies eat mosquitoes, anyone know if that’s true? My Google-fu wasn’t very revealing on their diet.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
Amazing. Thanks, Schlemazel.
Alain the site fixer
@satby: I think the nymphs, in water, do eat mosquito larva. Dragonfly nymphs look scary AF but are after small acquatic critters like larva and other developing bugs and ignore larger prey.
OzarkHillbilly
Pretty cool.
That would be really cool.
@satby: Yes, I suspect Alain is correct that it is the nymphs eating them and that the adults are mostly concerned with the next generation.
JPL
Definitely cool.
debbie
One summer, a bunch of dragonflies thought my silver Civic was a shiny pool of water. Cool to watch them darting about me, but it must have been frustrating for them.
satby
@Alain the site fixer: @OzarkHillbilly: I love all creatures that eat mosquitoes and ticks. Dragonfly nymphs added to the list.
Schlemazel
I have another video I took that captures the buzz they make but it is longer and ended up way too large to mail It as a pretty cool day
satby
They look like little drones flying around. Is that you talking on the video?
Mr. Prosser
I never knew dragonflies swarmed, amazing.
Dragonfly nymphs are voracious. I’ve seen them eat newly hatched tadpoles as well as mosquito larvae and other insect nymphs.
Schlemazel
@satby:
No, that is the mrs.
@Mr. Prosser:
Me neither. That was one of the reason I had to document it. Wish I had bills skills because I don’t think these potato photos do it justice
Alain the site fixer
@Schlemazel: put in your Dropbox or whatever and email me the link. I’ll download and then upload to site (or convert to save bandwidth first)
Rob
That is incredible. I didn’t know that dragonflies swarmed to that extent!
Schlemazel
@Alain the site fixer:
That didn’t occur to me. I’ll remember that if it happens again. Thanks
eclare
Great photos!
rikyrah
Very beautiful pictures :)
MomSense
Oh cool!
stinger
Amazing! I feel lucky whenever I see just one!
Major Major Major Major
Wow, that’s a lot of dragonflies!
J R in WV
Thanks for the photos and discussion. Adult Dragonflies do eat flying insects, I have to assume that would include skeeters of all types.
Last Sunday neighbors had a post-Vandalia gathering at their house, with old time string band picking in the dining room. Neighbor won a ribbon in an old-time music contest Saturday, is friendly and outgoing, so when he invites players over he gets a great crowd of real musicians.
And among the spouses and significant others were a small crowd of biologists, from whom I learned that o’possums, aka possums, are voracious eaters of ticks. I’ve never been fond of possums, as they do attempt to raid chicken coops that aren’t tight enough to keep them out. But if they eat ticks, I think we should have government programs to raise possums, train them to hunt and eat ticks, and release hundreds of them into the wild.
Kidding about training them… I don’t think marsupials have the needed brain structures for learning in a single generation. But raising them, releasing them into the wild, Hell Yes!! Ticks are horrible!!!
We just recently acquired “lone star ticks” which are so called because of a tiny bright white speck on their otherwise black/dark brown body. So a new set of tick-borne diseases. First time I found one I was amazed. Delivered it to our Vet clinic, where they tell me they send it in (somewhere, DNR?) for analysis of what diseases they carry. How they got here I don’t know. TX is a long way away. Strange how TXans appear to be proud of a new tick?! I kid, I don’t think it was actually named in TX.