A day of records

Whew! Where to begin. I rushed down to the oasis with the intention of watering and servicing feeders, then heading back to town. Sunday my husband is planning to take the bobcat loader down there and work on the road and I'll ride down with him then, so I'm "serving" extra time in town. That meant instead of watering half the oasis one day while lugging my camera, and the other half the next day, lugging the camera, I'd be using two hoses at the same time and running back and forth. Couldn't carry the camera.

Well, for starters, the heat was a record 104.° Then while I was watering near the back water feature that I had just filled, I observed what I thought was a female Blue-eyed Darner. Since I had been agonizing over whether my male Blue-eyed was actually an Arroyo Darner, I had it in my head that if I photographed the female (I'd never seen one before) it would be easier to separate the two species.

I ran to my pickup for the camera and relocated the darner. It was in deep shade and my camera doesn't take its best photos in the shade. When I got back to town and downloaded the photos I was unable to identify it. Posted it to my ode group on facebook and immediately got an ID of Turquoise-tipped Darner. That's a lifer for me and a first Brewster County record, I believe. What a surprise!

But before I knew it was a lifer, I parked in the carport at the oasis due to the excessive heat. Apparently, unbeknownst to me, when I got out of the pickup the door must have bumped the water trailer parked there. Suddenly, I was being stung by two wasps simultaneously. Never been stung by more than one wasp at a time before. It really hurt! I got my vengeance though. Located the hive beneath the water trailer and zapped it with Raid. YUCK!

The place is overrun with wasps these days. A few days ago a visitor got stung. I really hate that.

Other than that, I managed to get a few more ode shots. Here's an immature male Common Whitetail.

And here is a female Plateau Dragonlet.