Red dragon

What can I say except the blip monster was smiling on me today, obviously I have been a good boy dealing with the trials and tribulations that I have been dealt in the last couple of weeks. What a session, easily my best so far.

I arrived at the common around 08:00. The sun was too low to try the slope that I did yesterday, so I decided to do a lap of the common first. There were lots of dragons giving me the inspection, quite unnerving I would suspect, having such a large insect hovering about three feet in front of your face, except I am very comfortable with dragons now.

The first photo opportunity came from a large butterfly which flew past my head to get my attention and then alighted on a nearby tree at just about eye level. I approached with extreme stealth and was rewarded with a can full of shots. It was like she wanted a modeling portfolio shooting in one session, offering me all the poses that she had. Less than ten minutes into the session and the blip was definitely in the bag.

I continued the circuit and picked up a few shots of a wasp moth quickly followed by a colorful bug. I have photographed this bug before and it is easily worth a blip but once again it had no chance. I picked off a couple of shots of the tree for blipfolio as promised and started the return journey, thinking that I had more than enough material for the day.

I spotted the bright red twig about twenty feet in front of me, sure enough, it was a red dragon. The dragons have been incredibly difficult to blip at this location, probably due to the lack of decent perches to land on, which dragons require with their cumbersome wings. I went into full stealth mode, on my belly for the last ten feet. The dragon was in hunting mode, briefly hopping into the air and plucking small insects, always returning to the same perch.

I took a full five minutes on the approach, realizing that with the sun to my back, that this was a very rare opportunity if I could get close. I had about ten minutes of shots. After collecting enough variations of the static shots, I attempted in flight shots, as the dragon returned from each hunting expedition.

Back at the lab, I did not build my hopes up about the flight shots, as 1/500th sec is just not fast enough. I did capture a couple of reasonable shots just as the dragon was landing but they were all just a tad blurry. The blipped shot was taken a fraction of a second after landing, as the wings are still in the up position. What a stunning creature and what an experience being able to lie on the ground eighteen inches away from the action, even the platoon of ants crawling all over my lower legs could not interfere with this moment. I dread to think how the blip monster is going to make me pay tomorrow.

Dave