Mark Cassino Photography - Mark's Blog

After shooting Amber Meadowhawks in the Allegan Forest on Saturday, I ventured back to the same area last Sunday. The weather was changing – it was hot, cloudy, and rain threatened. This weather pattern would persist all week, with some near record high days and extremes of humidity.

Sunday, in the dull light under an overcast sky, was not a great day for shooting. I wound up pushing the ISO setting to 800 and dimming the fill flash as much as possible to keep the shots form taking on a flashed look. I did manage to get a few shots of truly red Meadowhawks, and they are shown below:

The area I was working in also had a nice patch of milkweed, and it was teeming with lots of Monarch Butterflies. Here is one, sipping on a Knapweed flower:

I finally ventured back into the forest today, a week later. Last week’s wild weather, with frequent intense thunderstorms and downpours, had left its mark on the forest and several roads were washed out or flooded. My goals were to get a shot of a mature male blue dasher (before they disappear for the season) and also to get a few more Meadowhawks. I really miss the loss of the fields off 46th steet, which used to be the most lucrative hunting grounds for all sorts of meadowhawks.

At any rate – I had not luck with the Blue Dasher – didn’t see a single one, male, female, mature or juvenile. I did see a couple of brilliant red Meadowhawks, but only managed these two photos of a female (or immature) specimen and a one male on his way to getting truly red.

I was fortunate, however, to see and photograph an Eastern Amberwing, a species I seldom encounter. These are quite small – smaller than even the Band Winged Meadowhawks – and can be a challenge to photograph as you have to get very close to fill the frame. Here are a few shots:

There is a great post on Urban Dragon Hunters about identifying odonates from photos. Long story short – it can be very difficult if not impossible to come up with an accurate ID based on a photo. The article also touches on the internet effect off misidentifications – where one misidentified photo leads to the misidentification of another, and so on, until everything is jumbled up. This article echos a little insert called “Identifying Meadowhawks” in Stokes Beginner’s Guide to Dragonflies that makes the same points. But, alas, I feel foolish if I can’t offer some ID to accompany the photos… and so foolishly try to ID my photos when it really is impossible. So in the future you may find more identifications that only penetrate to the genus or even family level.

Except… that is… when a nice, unequivocal specimen presents itself. Here are a some shots of a band-Winged Meadowhawk, Sympetrum semicinctum. Between its diminutive size and distinctive wing coloration, there’s no mistaking this one. In Dragonflies of the North Woods, Kurt Mead notes this under the heading Similar Species: “None.”

Ok – I’m on firm ground.

These photos were taken on Saturday, July 17, in a nice field in the Allegan Forest, off 44th Street between 115th and 112th Avenues. It was a hot day and the little dragonfly was in the obelisk position – minimizing his body’s exposure to the sun.

The shot above was taken at f16 to maximize depth of field. That made the dragon’s abdomen and winds a little sharper, but also made the background a bit less creamy and a little curdled looking. However, I like the nice separation between the wings.

And lastly, one more shot of another Band Winged Meadowhawk form the same day and field (it was full of them), this one is a less dramatic pose:

A couple more tourist snapshots from my U.P. vacation, several weeks distant now…

Here’s the East Channel Light, a lighthouse located on the east side of Grand Isle, a large island off Munising, Michigan. Obviously, this light is no longer in service. When you take the boat tour of the pictured rocks the tour boat schleps you around the rocks for a few hours and on the way back they pull up to this lighthouse and turn the boat both ways, so you can get nice photos. Everyone on the boat got essentially the same shot – it’s a fun tour and highly recommended.

Here’s the little light station located just outside of the cabin we rented on Grand Marais Harbor. This was snapped on the first night we were there – a cold, damp, and foggy evening. The light is in service – I didn’t even think of getting a shot of it as it lit up at twilight, not till just now. Well, something for the next trip.

I have a few snapshots of the Pictured Rocks for a future post, and that will be it for the U.P. for now.

Here are a few photos of dragonflies, shot this past weekend in the Allegan Forest.

You know it’s summer when the Red Meadowhawks arrived. I was working the fields off 125th Avenue, north of the river, without much luck Sunday morning. I wandered along the edge of the forest, and spotted this specimen sitting on a twig, with the sun dappled woods in the background. It clearly is a Meadowhawk of some sort, on its way to vibrant red colors:

After that, I wandered around the forest’s edge a little more. I saw several Meadowhawks, none bright red yet but a few starting to change. Here is another immature individual:

After that I hit some back fields off 46th Street. The little shanty that was there is now gone. I wandered around a bit and found a lone Blue Dasher – possibly a mature female, maybe an immature specimen. Regardless – it liked posing! All of these shots are the same individual:

Lastly, on Saturday morning I drove by a field off 115th Ave, between 44th and 42nd streets. It’s one of those places where I don’t expect to see dragonflies, but sometimes am pleasantly surprised. On both Saturday and again on Sunday the field had a good number of Calico Pennants and Halloween Pennants, with the Calico’s being the more numerous.

Calico Pennants are a smaller dragonfly, so you have to get closer to get a nice shot. They also seem to be more skittish than other species – like Halloween Pennants or Blue Dashers – but maybe they just seem to be that way because I’m trying to get so close. The Calico’s do seem to try to perch on flimsy blades of grass and other plant stems that bob and weave in the wind – making the dragonflies flit from one unsuitable perch to another. Other species seem more adept at picking studier perches – assuming, of course, that is what they intend.

Another female Calico Pennant - the few males who were present managed to elude me, despite more time than I should admit spent chasing them.

lastly - a mating pair of Robber Flies. It looks like they are stuck in a spider web - they catually were hanging in it. But when they decided to leave they just flew off, ripping the web apart:

While up in the U.P. earlier this month, I stayed in a cabin on Coast Guard Point, just outside of Grand Marais. There were signs on the beach about the Piping Plover – apparently this little peninsula is one of the last breeding areas for this endangered bird.

On the first morning I stumbled out of the cabin and saw two little shore bird chicks running by the front door and then scurrying off into the beach grass. Their concerned parent landed a short distance off, and started bobbing and wobbling around, almost like a Killdeer feigning a broken wing.

It was over in a flash and I thought “Gosh! Could that have been a Piping Plover!”

And so later in the week as I lounged on the beach and read, I made sure to bring a simple birding setup with me – Pentax K7 camera, Tokina 400mm f 5.6, flash and monopod. Ultimately the parent bird returned – but it was no Plover, just a Spotted Sandpiper.

It was still a lot of fun to watch and I took a few snapshots as it bobbed on the rocks out in the bay. The little flash was not powerful enough to do much with fill lighting, and the lens has been clouded a bit inside due to fungus, but overall I was happy with these – the first few bird shots I’ve taken in several years.

I didn’t photograph any dragonflies while I was up in the U.P. last week. We spent a day in the Seney Wildlife Refuge and while there I saw many Frosted Whitefaces – but no photos due to the cold weather, the wind, and – oh yeah – forgetting to put the flash in the backpack.

Oh well. Once back in southwestern Michigan I wandered into the Allegan Forest, and found many Halloween Pennants in a field north of the river. They were perching on the mullein which are in full bloom this year.

Here is a male Halloween Pennant. The common name of the species derives from the black and orange colors of the mature males. This guy may be a bit young yet, but his colors are emerging:

And here are some shots of females, with their lovely gold and olive brown coloration:

Pam and I spent last week up in Grand Marias, Michigan. It is a little town on the shore of Lake Superior. We rented a nice cabin on Coast Guard Point, and had the big lake on one side, and a quiet bay on the other. People warned us that the black flies might be a problem up there, this time of year. But evening temperatures in the low 40’s (Fahrenheit) and daytime winds in the low 40’s (miles per hours) seem to keep the flies at bay.

It was a great week and we visited a lot of the local waterfalls. Always at mid day, never with an intent to photograph them. Here’s a tourist snap shot of Munising Falls. They are located right in the city of Munising and to get to them you just park your car and walk on a boardwalk to the observation deck. It’s that simple.