Surprise meadowhawk

It was ridiculously warm this afternoon—low 60s—and after I'd trekked uphill at Babcock Ridge and again spotted very, very little, I decided to take a few more minutes to head across the street to Henne to see if I might be able to spot some ducks. There were no waterfowl in evidence as I scanned the stream from atop the esker, and I had very little hope of seeing anything intriguing when I got to the boardwalk. One thought on my lips as I came downhill was this: Surely there'd be no dragonflies. Surely. It had, after all, been winter cold, and even though the meadowhawks, the last of the odes on the wing, could handle modestly-below-freezing temperatures, they no doubt couldn't escape the deadly clutches of the mid-teens a week earlier. But in the bright, warm sunlight on the boards, there was an insect who disagreed with my dire assessment. In short order, another stopped by, and then the meadowhawks commenced to courting. I was stunned and, because I felt I needed to know precisely which species these amazingly hardy critters belonged to, I captured one to take home and identify. Then, however, I thought about how the pair—and that was all I'd seen—might have been in the process of passing on their remarkable genes. In the unlikely event that I'd be preventing this evolution from occurring, I let the ode go. Better to play it safe.