Shadow darner

We're in the waning days of the odonate season, but there are still at least a few species accompanying me on my daily treks. There are the petite meadowhawks, of course—a complex of several hard-to-tell-apart odes that I really ought to net and learn—and they'll be with us, if last year is any guide, into mid-November. But there's also a more robust critter: a B-52 to a meadowhawk Cessna. These are the Shadow Darners, so called because they like to fly late in the day, even into the dusk. I routinely see them cruising various fields, particularly the Bell Cedar Swamp refuge meadow, but they never sit still for very long. I guess the prey pickings are pretty slim in October, so the large and fast-flying odes have to be constantly in the air to capture enough to sustain them. On the rare times they land near enough for me to observe them and get a picture, I can't get over how handsome they are. Appropriately, they sport yellow racing stripes on the thorax. After a brief pause, they're once again off to the odonate races.