Spot-winged Glider, Napatree

I had to talk myself into going to the beach this afternoon, and it was a difficult argument, since I'd already gone for a lengthy bike ride and I hadn't really accomplished anything on the task list around the house. But there was the prospect of documenting migrants—birds, butterflies, dragonflies, and hey, maybe Taylor Swift, who has a house near Napatree, my photo op beach of choice—and, in the end, that species of duty won out over its more prudent rival. My lack-of-virtue was almost immediately rewarded when I crested the first dune that brings walkers to the beach and, hovering over the now full-blooming Seaside Goldenrods—the flower that helps fuel Monarch Butterflies on their path to the Mexican Highlands—I noticed an unusual... and unusually curious... dragonfly. It was clearly checking me out and might, if I'd stay still longer, landed on me. Instead, it opted to rest on a shrub, where I photographed it from every possible angle. At a glance, I could tell that it was no commoner, and when I got home to study the photos, I discovered that it was a Spot-winged Glider. The ode doesn't travel as far as its long-distance-champion cousin, the Wandering Glider, which can traverse half the Pacific Ocean, but the Spot-winged can pack on the migratory miles up and down the Atlantic Coast.