Aquatic Garden residents

When we visited the beautiful Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens, we anticipated that, because the lotus and lily plants are growing in shallow, muddy water, we would be pestered by midges and mosquitoes.

In fact, not a single bite that day - and the flying insects that were most in evidence were the beautiful dragon and damsel flies.

There was a great variety in terms of size and colour and David managed to capture quite a few in close up..

This one was rather striking as at first sight it appears to have square wings (or two sets of semaphore flags)..

We heard many frogs, but with the cover of the lotus and lily leaves they were well camouflaged and so we didn't see a single one.  By the noise they were quite large - I imagine like this one that we photographed in Atlanta earlier in the year..

We did see several turtles, basking in the sun and very muddy - a type of sun screen for the shell?  

Or just the result of living in a rather muddy swamp?

There was quite a size difference - the first turtle was 9 or 10 inches long and the little painted turtle, above, just a few inches.

There are said to be some 140 varieties of birds throughout the year living in or visiting the gardens.  In the heat of the day we heard a few in the trees but only saw these egrets from a distance by the river.

David was disappointed not to see the beavers that live in the swamp by the Anacostia River, but they are mainly nocturnal.

Monarch butterflies are often seen in the garden at this time of year, but not by us. We saw only this more familiar one - a Red Admiral, I think?