At a scabland pond within range of my bicycle a wet spring gives rise to a bumper crop of woolly mullein, a very tall, large-leaved plant that culminates in a single, thick spire with a smattering of small, yellow flowers. Bordering the cattails and interspersed among tall grass and fireweed, a platoon of mullein adds to a natural blind I can use to photograph birds that perch in the surrounding trees.

The birds are here for the bugs and, increasingly, so am I. Of course, I’m here to take photographs and, to some extent, briefly escape the menace of dystopian politics and a literal pandemic. If I get eaten it will likely be slowly, and far away from the camouflage of the mullein.

Not so for the dragonflies and the sleek, acrobatic birds that snatch them from the air. In the realm of a scabland pond the food chain includes sharp-shinned hawks that ambush from every direction, shattering the calm and grabbing large insects and small birds alike.

Fortunately for the birds the dragonflies are prolific. And fortunately for the photographers, the dragonflies, like the blue darners I first noticed a few years ago at a remote pond, are piped with color and character. Dragonflies seldom live much longer than a year but evidence in the fossil record indicates their ancestors date back some 300 million years. Evolution has served them well and given them extraordinary eye sight with which to hunt smaller insects.

A distant and long-extinct relative, the so-called “griffenflies,” had wingspans exceeding two feet in length. I imagine even a sharp-shinned hawk would think twice about that.

–tjc