Road Trip - Dragonflies - Photography - Geology

I am heading back to Todd Lake to see if I can get some better photos of Tanypteryx, especially cop pairs. Edited by Tanypteryx, : No reason given.

Dude just go in the bathroom and take a selfie in the mirror like a normal person.

Bad idea... I don't want to see that in his bathroom. Just bugs doing it... please.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Well, the excursion yesterday was interesting, but I didn't end up shooting any photos of Tanypteryx and the only cop pair flew high up into the trees as soon as they formed a wheel.The fellow who was driving showed up in a new Tesla. It is an amazing example of technology. The purpose of the trip was to capture some Tanypteryx females at Todd Lake to transplant to a seep near Portland. If they will oviposit in the new habitat we may be able to establish a new population. The nymph stage lasts 5 years, so the transplantation procedure will need to be repeated each of the next 5 years to have a thriving annual population.The Tesla driver owns the property with the seep and he placed two pairs under chickenwire domes in the habitat last night (we were only able to collect 2 females). This morning both pairs were gone and he did find 2 sets of wings, so some kind of small predator feasted on them last night.He is going to try again before the flight season is over, but I think it is a long shot that he will be able to establish a viable population. I will dig out some shots of other species doing it, but for now this is a shot of an Anax junius male that I was able to get close to the day before yesterday.

On the way home from the DSA meeting in Utah we stopped at Fish Spring National Wildlife Refuge west of Provo. A long, long, long drive on bad, very dusty dirt road. I managed to net a female Anax walsinghami with the common name Giant Darner. Photos by some other peopleI was able to get her to lay some eggs for me and I am now in the middle of a project to try and keep about 60 of the tiny nymphs that hatched from the eggs alive. They are voracious predators so I have to provide them with lots of tiny critters to eat.Anyway, here are a few photos of the eggs and nymphs. These were all alive and emersed in water.This is a ventral shot of a nymph about 10 days after it hatched from an egg. I shot this with the imaging system at my new/old work lab. Note that you can see the labium or lower lip which is folded back underneath the head. Odonate nymphs use the labium to capture and hold prey. It can be rapidly (a fraction of a second) extended and has grasping hooks on the end.Some parts of the nymph are transparent or translucent so some features can be seen below them. A diagram showing a dorsal view with the labium extended and ventral view with the labium retracted. I sent some eggs to a friend and she took these stunning images. Used with permission.These were about 10 days after they were laid. You can see eyespots forming. This is a ventral view a few days later, the labium and and facets in the eye can be seen. In lateral view the facets in the eye and legs can be clearly seen. A dorsal view of the nymph 2 days after hatching from the egg. Note the pair of tubes visible in the abdomen. These are the trachea the carry oxygen from the internal gills to the rest of the body. They branch into finer and finer tubes to supply oxygen to all the cells and of course, carry CO2 away.

I've been gone too long. Glad I finally caught up. I'm going to be laughing to the point of tears over this for all the next week!

You're a tickle, Tany. Thank you!

My wife web surfed with her phone and found potential interesting spots to visit along our tentative route. The Mammoth Site near Hot Springs, South Dakota turned out to be worth seeing. It was the site of a hot spring and sink hole that about 26,000 years ago trapped more than 50 Mammoths. The site was going to be commercially developed when the first bones were discovered. The developer alerted several scientists and eventually the property was preserved and careful excavation began. A building was built over the site to protect it from the elements and now the public can visit the indoor dig. The skeletons are still bone rather than stone so as they are exposed to the air they dry out and become very fragile. Special techniques have been developed to stabilize and strengthen the bones and care is taken to not cause any damage as they are removed from the surrounding matrix. Enjoy

Writing on another site (involved film rescue and the photos captured on old never developed film from WW2) where the guy used a portable canister developing device, like one I used to have in the early 60's, and then I got nostalgic about my first 35mm camera: I used this camera on 6 week vacation to France and environs and loved that it fit in my pocket. I also had a trigger cord to screw in the shutter button.Only used B&W film in it and developed it in a canister that would load two films at once.It was a big step from the Brownie Box camera that preceded it. I remember walking home from the camera store taking random pictures of trees and buildings.Enjoy