Nature Logs

Floating logs are useful microhabitats for plants and insects, and their avian predators know this. Two today, one shy and subtle, the second brash and flamboyant.

This small, weathered, fallen tree doesn’t look very promising,

but it was clearly home to some sort of insect, because a Spotted Sandpiper flew in and poked around for some time. (Sorry about the photo, but I was in my kayak and it was windy as well as wobbly):

Another log had been in the water for much much longer,

and a rich variety of mosses and small plants had embellished much of it.

But this time the insect was visible, a dragonfly, and the predator was a red-winged blackbird male.

It pulled off the wings, they are visible in the shot below lying on the log:

then picked up the body.

and ate it:

Tummy full, he pranced happily along the log:

launching himself from the far end across the pond:

I suspect the dragonfly nymph had crawled out of the water onto the conveniently low-lying log, and the adult had just emerged. It may have been this species, a Chalk-fronted Corporal, Ladona julia*, since a live one was perching nearby:

It was next to a slender female Aurora Damselfly, Chromagrion conditum, named I think for the golden sun-colored marks on its thorax:

*I wonder who Julia was?