Delta-spotted spiketail, Borden's

With most of my recent round of magazine work, um, put to bed, I've had the welcome chance to just get up and explore. On today's agenda was an attempt to visit a future addition to the land trust fold: a local refuge-in-the-making that is home to a rare bird called the Cerulean Warbler. The last time I spotted one of these gorgeous songsters was more than 20 years ago, and I was hoping spot it and document the warbler with the Sigma supertelephoto. But with the exception of a few snatches of Cerulean song and a very brief fly-by of a pair of putative warblers, I wasn't lucky... well, not in the bird department. In a stretch of stream and related wetlands, however, I was very lucky in the odonate department, with the big lens able to bring a number of distant species into sharp and close view. The best was an image of an old friend: a Delta-spotted Spiketail that "sat" for a lovely portrait.