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Description
To the best of my knowledge this is a female Green Darner.
I came across this lovely creature on a bit of a detour this morning while taking out the garbage.
It's been unseasonably chilly the past few nights, and she was sitting motionless in the dark on the broken pavement. I nearly stepped on her, and if it weren't for her bright color and undamaged wings I would have thought she was dead.

A quick tap of the finger, replied to with an angry lift of the abdomen, confirmed to me that she was very much alive. I took a few pictures, but aside from a weak tapping of her right foreleg she refused to move any further.
The concrete where she sat would be torn up by afternoon, and cars would come and go long before that, and while the sun might have reached her first I decided not to chance it. I coaxed her onto my hands, leg by little leg.

Have you ever held a dragonfly? It's fantastic, like holding a little mouse but with the buzz of its heart scaled down and sped up to the most subtle shimmer of life.

I took her into the sun, unwilling to set her down while the birds were out and the wind was gusting. I convinced her to move to my left hand so I could get a few pictures, wondering as the minutes passed if perhaps she was injured after all and would not fly away, but then - flit, flit - in two silver shakes of a dragon's wings she was gone.

I was nearly late for work, but I think it was a good use of my time.

Description
To the best of my knowledge this is a female Green Darner.
I came across this lovely creature on a bit of a detour this morning while taking out the garbage.
It's been unseasonably chilly the past few nights, and she was sitting motionless in the dark on the broken pavement. I nearly stepped on her, and if it weren't for her bright color and undamaged wings I would have thought she was dead.

A quick tap of the finger, replied to with an angry lift of the abdomen, confirmed to me that she was very much alive. I took a few pictures, but aside from a weak tapping of her right foreleg she refused to move any further.
The concrete where she sat would be torn up by afternoon, and cars would come and go long before that, and while the sun might have reached her first I decided not to chance it. I coaxed her onto my hands, leg by little leg.

Have you ever held a dragonfly? It's fantastic, like holding a little mouse but with the buzz of its heart scaled down and sped up to the most subtle shimmer of life.

I took her into the sun, unwilling to set her down while the birds were out and the wind was gusting. I convinced her to move to my left hand so I could get a few pictures, wondering as the minutes passed if perhaps she was injured after all and would not fly away, but then - flit, flit - in two silver shakes of a dragon's wings she was gone.

I was nearly late for work, but I think it was a good use of my time.