Nature's Jewels

Today is a non-riding day - just too hot and humid. So, instead, a few nature pictures. Last week my husband and I had the opportunity to take a guided tour of a wonderful nature area in our county - Illinois Beach State Park. The park has diverse habitat and has been the subject of many years of restoration efforts - our tour was actually led by the volunteer steward who has been working there for many years. We had a beautiful day - sunny and not too hot - and just by chance were there on a day when two species of dragonflies were emerging. It's hard to even convey the huge numbers of dragonflies - they were whizzing everywhere, landing in the vegetation and there were so many the sky was full of them - there were probably as many as hundreds of thousands.

Our friend Nathan from the Liberty Prairie Conservancy - a very active land conservation and restoration organization in our part of the world - was on the tour with us and captured some wonderful photos of the two species of dragonflies. To my mind, dragonflies are nature's jewels.

Here is a Common Green Darner:

And here is the aptly-named Black Saddlebags (appropriate name for a horse blog!):

Dragonflies are among the most important predators of mosquitos, so the more of them I see, the happier I am!