Dragonfly... A moment on our epic nature walk.

Today we had an epic nature walk...

It involved a tiny frog, a beautiful butterfly, a very large moth.... and the witnessing of a most amazing transformation...

Saving this dragonfly from the pond yesterday was very cool....

But nothing prepared us for what we saw today...

We hiked out through Lily Lake Woods to the edge of Lily lake...
We were seeing lots of these... the skin of dragonfly nymphs left behind when the dragonfly molts for the last time into an adult dragonfly... notice the hole in the top just behind the head... That is were the dragonfly emerges from the skin...

Then we came upon this...
A newly emerged dragonfly...
It's wings were still folded and crumpled up...
Over time they started to become more ridged and straighten out...
I wish I had looked at my watch to see how long we were watching... In the end I think it may have been about 45 min... I have read that it can take about 2 hrs from beginning to end so I am thinking we discovered it a little over half way through the process...
After it's wings were extended it started to move away from it's old identity and up the rock... This was when we first noticed the shine on it's wings...
It moved slow at first....
Fionna could not resist leading a finger...
It was happy to climb up and at that point was the first time it opened it's wings...
It rested there for a little while...
Fionna was now holding the tiny frog in one hand and the dragonfly on the other...

More on the frog tomorrow...
She was studying how it's wings were attached and how they moved...
It was cleaning it's head and eyes... Fionna was excited to see how it moved it's head around...
It did not take as long as I thought and it was ready to fly...
Fionna was watching... waiting for takeoff...
It did not fly far and landed on some moss... but was back up right away...
I held out my hand... it landed and fluttered it's wings... and said goodbye...

Off into the forest...

We are in "learn about it mode" now... We have read through all of our books that have anything about dragonflies... I am sure tomorrow Fionna will want to get on the computer to do some more research...

Here is a little bit of what I found tonight if you are really interested in learning more....

• A cool time lapse video of a dragonfly emerging...
• A very neat set of photos on flickr of an emerging dragonfly...
• Wikipidia info on dragonflies...
• A very fun description of the difference between dragonflies and damselflies by Eren over at The Magnifying Glass...

I am sure more dragonfly info will be coming your way...

I will try to share the rest of our epic nature walk tomorrow!