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Thursday, August 02, 2007

Common Whitetail

I hate the "Common" adjective in bird names, and it isn't much better in dragonflies. C'mon, animal-namer-people, get a thesaurus and try a little harder, will 'ya? Instead of Common Whitetail, how about something like Pied Whitetail or Zone-winged Skimmer?

I had this striking dragonfly in my backyard a couple of weeks back. Interesting to see how lining it up with different backgrounds changes the overall feel of the shot. The trick with the darker backgrounds was to avoid overexposing the bright abdomen. On the pic with the darkest background I had to compensate -1.0.

2 comments:

Patrick B. said...

The word "Common" definitely appears a lot more than the words "Rare" or "Uncommon" in animal nomenclature. The only instance I can think of is "Rare Skipper." I like "Zone-winged Skimmer."

Anonymous said...

Hey Bill,
Since you sent this blasted thing to LaPuma, who then sent it to me, I'm throwing it back at you . . .

“Tag, you’re it!”

I’m tagging you with the “8 Random Facts” blog meme. In order to avoid bad blog karma, you need to visit my blog at: http://outdoors.mainetoday.com/naturewatching/fieldnotes/014335.html and follow the instructions!

Have fun,
Derek