Gray Sanddragon

This April, my sister and her husband joined Betsy and me for a delightful walk around the Boyce Thompson Arboretum, just east of Phoenix, Arizona.  It's a beautiful place, and is particularly good for birding.

One of the stops along the walk is Ayer Lake, shown below:

It's a beautiful spot where we usually see several interesting birds, and an occasional dragonfly.  We often see Flame Skimmers and Blue-eyed Darners here, but this time, quite unexpectedly, we suddenly saw a Gray Sanddragon perched on the shore.  My sister grabbed her camera and took a quick shot, shown below.  It's a good thing she did, because it immediately took off and was never seen again.

We sometimes see this dragonfly at the Arboretum, but until now they had only been seen in Queen Creek, never at the lake.  Thanks to Jennifer's quick camera work, we have documentation of this unusual sighting.