Saddlebags McKinney

I spent a good part of the day in New Haven being poked and probed, x-rayed and phlebotomized, by my medical team, all of whom were trying to figure out why I've gone from able-bodied to semi-invalid in the past couple of months. I don't yet have a diagnosis, much less a treatment plan, but on the way home, since I can still walk just fine, I decided to stop by the Salt Meadow Unit of the Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge, which is just off Route 95 in Westbrook, CT. I discovered this wonderful spot last year, and I try to visit whenever I'm traveling home from Yale. I was hoping for birds and butterflies, but the early migrants weren't on the move. And, sadly for me, the population of Seaside Dragonlets, a salt-marsh breeding odonate, I'd found here had called it a season. But I did spot, not long after I started hiking, a few dragonflies known as Saddlebags. These are also migratory, but today, I think they were just content to patrol the refuge for insect prey—and to confound photographers and naturalists bent on capturing a sharp, on-the-wing image... and a sure identification. I couldn't do much about the crispness of the image, but based on what I can see, I suspect that the dot pattern on the abdomen is a sign that this is a Black Saddlebags, rather than its cousin, the also-migratory Carolina Saddlebags.