Green Skimmer - Yala, Sri Lanka

Green Skimmer (Ortherum sabina sabina) - Yala, Sri Lanka

Between the morning and afternoon drives through the Yala national park I spent some time experimenting with my macro lens. I'm still getting the hang of using it but it was very early days in Yala. Fortunately the harsh midday light ruled out the need for a flash and simplified things for me.

More photographs inside.

Green Skimmer (Ortherum sabina sabina) - Yala, Sri Lanka 

This Green Skimmer was a cooperative subject and was content to sit still while I played around with auto-focus and manual focus. I also had extension tubes on which made focusing quite difficult. I used the macro lens for the first and third photographs on this post.

 

Green Skimmer (Ortherum sabina sabina) - Yala, Sri Lanka

The Green Skimmer is also known as the Green Marsh Hawk and can be found in parts of Africa, Asia and Australia. Both sexes are similar in appearance and can be identified by the shape of the abdomen, dilated first three segments and the alternating yellow-green and black pattern.

Green Skimmer (Ortherum sabina sabina) - Yala, Sri Lanka

It is a very common dragonfly in Sri Lanka and can be found around tanks, ponds, irrigation channels and rice fields. It's range covers the low country and extends up into the hills. I have photographed them on a number of occasions in Thalangama, Yala and Arankelle.

Green Skimmer (Ortherum sabina sabina) - Yala, Sri Lanka

All photographs on this post were taken with the Canon 7D. The 100mm macro was used for the first and third photographs while the 100-400mm lens was used for the others. Fortunately I didn't have to use a flash for any of these photographs.

Green Skimmer

The Green Skimmer is a widespread dragonfly in Sri Lanka. It is frequently found hovering near ponds, water ways, paddy fields and streams. More info inside.

This image was taken at Arankelle near Kurunegala. We were travelling up to Dambulla at the time and had planned to stop at Arankelle for breakfast as we wanted to have a look at the ruins of the ancient monastery. As I approached one of the ponds in the complex I noticed that it was teeming with dragonflies. The majority of them were either Green Skimmers or Scarlet Baskers. I sat on the steps leading down into the pond and waited a couple of minutes until this Green Skimmer settled on one of the reeds in the water. Fortunately I had the 100-400mm lens on the camera and was able to capture the image above without having to move any closer. The light was fairly good and I was able to shoot at 1/1000th of a second.

I also noticed a pair of dragonflies in the wheel position in flight but was unable to capture an image of them. I managed to lock focus on them but they moved before I could release the shutter.

I'm still not very good at identifying dragonflies and had actually thought that this Green Skimmer was a Sri Lankan Forktail. Thankfully Amila was able to correct me.