Last year was a very wet summer in southern Alberta and the result was a lot more insects. I have been trying for years to get photos of dragonflies in flight but they are so quick and their flight so erratic that I never managed to get a photo I was happy with. After going down to the shore of a pond to photograph a moose I noticed what seemed like hundreds of dragonflies flying around.  Each dragonfly seemed to have a defined aerial territory that it would defend against if another dragonfly entered it’s airspace.  After chasing off the invaders they would return to the same general area to hover and wait.  After watching the same dragonfly for some time I figured out where along the shore I should sit to have the best chance of photographing it while it was hovering.  One afternoon and hundreds of photographs later I managed to get a few I liked. This photo was taken with the pond and clouds reflecting in the water behind the dragonfly. As for the type of dragonfly, it is either a paddle-tailed or lancet-tipped darner.  Apparently you can ID them based on the tail anatomy but unless you find a dead one it’s pretty hard identifying them in flight even with still photographs.