Behind the Puddle

Last night, the puddle gave us something we couldn’t photograph.

We watched what I believe were two Blue Jays swooping low over the water. They would come down so close to the surface that the water moved beneath them, then quickly rise again and circle back for another pass.

At first, we couldn’t figure out what they were doing.

Were they catching something from the water? Small fish, maybe? Or were they hunting something just above it?

And then I thought about the dragonflies. They are everywhere over the puddle right now.

I watch them dance above the water throughout the day, darting one direction and then another, hovering for just a moment before disappearing somewhere my eyes can’t quite follow. Occasionally one will come closer to the patio, but they seldom stay long enough to offer me a picture.

Apparently, the Blue Jays don’t need them to pause.

Blue Jays will eat dragonflies and other insects, and suddenly those quick dives toward the water made a little more sense. Maybe we weren’t watching the jays fish at all. Maybe we were watching them hunt in the air just inches above the puddle.

I suppose I will never know for certain what they caught.

There is no photograph to enlarge and inspect later. No perfectly timed picture of a Blue Jay with a dragonfly in its beak.

Just the memory of two flashes of blue swooping over the water and the surface moving beneath them.

And maybe that is enough.

I have become particularly fond of the dragonflies this summer. Living this close to shallow, sometimes nearly standing water, mosquitoes could easily make sitting outside miserable. Instead, the dragonflies spend their days patrolling the puddle, eating mosquitoes and other insects while their young live another part of their lives beneath the surface.

They are doing work I rarely notice while putting on a show I can’t seem to photograph.

Then along come the Blue Jays.

Another neighbor. Another appetite. Another small piece of an ecosystem that doesn’t organize itself according to who I happen to be rooting for.

I can appreciate the dragonflies for helping keep the mosquitoes at bay and still appreciate the Blue Jays for being exactly what they are.

Perhaps that is one of the lessons of watching a place closely enough.

Nature isn’t a collection of individual characters living separate stories. Pinecone, the geese, the herons, the dragonflies, the mosquitoes, the Blue Jays, and even the things beneath the water that I never see, are part of something happening together.

Sometimes I get a picture. Sometimes I get to watch. And sometimes the most beautiful things happening Behind the Puddle are simply too fast to capture.

So I put down the phone and let my eyes do the remembering. Not everything we notice can be captured. Some moments ask only that we were there to see them.