Odonate on the wing

When I started this blog more than two years ago, my walking route usually had me taking a right at the foot of my driveway and following a circuitous but barely changing round-trip route. These days, with part of that trek now off-limits because of development and heart-break, I more often than not turn left and head up the road to the Bell Cedar Swamp preserve. For the past few afternoons there, I've noticed the appearance of big odonates on patrol. Naturally, I wanted to ID them and get photographs of an exceptionally tricky target. Dragonflies on the wing are always a photographic challenge and, to make the game even harder, the electronics on my go-to 55-200mm lens decided to fail as I was trying to make the auto-focus lock in on what I was pretty sure was a Common Green Darner. With no bells and whistles at my disposal, I had to go old-fashioned and employ manual focus. I'm happy to report that the eye-hand coordination still works reasonably well.