Soon, we will be swamped by dragonflies, butterflies and others again.
This beautiful dragonfly decided to pose for me as you will see in here, and also some other garden visitors.
We were on our way to a school that works with disabled children, and after a meet, we took a break for some coffee. This gave me an opportunity to walk around with my camera in the big gardens. They have planted huge flowerbeds with plants that have different colors, and as I started to have a closer look, a dragonfly appeared. Now who am I to refuse a photoshoot, and so I let rip with my camera. Surprisingly, the dragonfly didn't fly away, and instead it sat at a few other spots before it disappeared.
Come and look at the results of the photoshoot.
As we left the house, the clouds told me that it would be a hot day.
Below you will see 4 more shots of the dragonfly, and its markings looked almost identical to the Hooktail species, but I cannot be sure.
Odonata have a lineage that extends back in time for about 300 million years. The earliest odonata in the fossil record pre-date dinosaurs by about 100 million years, and they pre-date birds by about 150 million years. Odonata were amongst the very first animals to evolve the power of flight.
Source: Book, Dragonflies and Damselflies. ISBN 978-1-77584-184-5
Let me also show you some other visitors in the garden. Below was a speckled beetle on some yellow flowers.
And then an Acraea Butterfly on what looked like a yellow daisy flower.
And finally 2 photos of a female carpenter bee on some spur flowers.
Our work often leads us to places such as creches and schools that are located in nature, and you can be sure that where there is nature, there you will find me. My wife is so used to it, that she can instinctively find me wherever I go with my camera. We do very stressful work and I find nature to be my stress reliever. The song of birds in the ears, the blue skies, all the flowers, and even the smallest of insects all show me their beauty. Nature is also a good teacher of how we have to learn to relax and to meditate. A hundred years ago, there were no chemists, and the people identified the power of healing in nature. Medicine was found in nature, but sadly with all the new pill developments and other medical progresses, a secret of the healing powers of nature have been lost. Instead, these days, people cannot care about nature and that is really a bad situation.
Such is life.
I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the story.
Photos by Zac Smith-All Rights Reserved.
Camera: Canon PowershotSX70HS Bridge camera.
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