Who’d have thought some chance
pictures would make me a believer! I'd been tracking a pair of sunbirds as they went about setting up home and I discovered it took some agility and a whole lot of patience to get a few decent close-ups. Sometimes as I waited, I’d snap random stuff for fun—an entire series of raindrops on leaves, flowers and wires (they looked
like little fairy lights, I swear!), gossamer cobwebs billowing from withered branches and even a thorny hedge, I thought, managed to form some interesting
symmetry through my lens.
I spied a dragonfly on the wall on
one such wait and shot it carelessly. It was rather plain looking and
blended in almost completely with the water-stained garden wall. I was
pretty sure I’d end up deleting the pictures. After a long wait I was eventually rewarded with some fantastic footage of my feathered friends in all their
splendid glory and I couldn’t wait to download and admire my latest cache!
Whoa! The birds looked great
but who was this magical nymph that leapt out of my screen with delicate
shimmering wings that I didn’t recognize! Was it the same dragonfly that I wasn’t
interested in, at first? I was fascinated now!
My trusted friend, Google, told me
that this species was called the Granite Ghost or the Indian Rockdweller and
they were useful in keeping the vicious Aedes mosquito and other pesky insects
at bay in a habitation. Beautiful and noble! I couldn’t stop gazing at the jeweled perfection that was its wings.
Copper tints gave them a burnished stained-glass appearance and I wished I were
a better photographer to capture their beauty flawlessly.
Confucius was an insightful man
indeed when he said, “Everything has beauty, but not everyone can see it.” Well, I promise to keep looking for the beauty that abounds in everything
everywhere.
