Blue Dasher Dragonfly

I love to sit on the front porch and watch the dragonflies chase around above the Water Garden.  The Blue Dasher is an abundant and entertaining member of the group.

Males of the species are most noticeable as they perch on vegetation near the water.  They will typically choose the highest point on a plant stalk from which to sit and observe, but when the rushes bend down the dragonflies will take a position on the highest point of the arc.  From this vantage point they will rush out to capture small flying insects or chase away rival males.  There are so many things that need chasing that the males are seldom still for very long.

The females are more secretive and less often seen.  They will perch to watch for suitable insect prey, but they don’t go in for the aerial acrobatics associated with protecting a territory.  That and their more drab coloration, tends to keep them from being noticed.

A female hovering close above the water usually indicates an individual searching for a suitable location to deposit eggs.  The downdraft from her wings produces a pattern of rough water similar to that below a hovering helicopter. 

Egg release occurs when the female dips down and touches the tip of her abdomen to the water.  Several hundred eggs can be released a few at a time in less than a minute.  Each egg will produce an aquatic nymph that will stalk the depths of the Water Garden in search of aquatic prey.

This short video shows the female depositing eggs into the water.  The white eggs can be seen falling through the water after each dip of the abdomen.  Click HERE for the higher quality YouTube version of the video.

Dragonflies

Summer is the time of dragonflies and their numbers have been increasing steadily for the past couple of weeks. The only permanent body of water at Blue Jay Barrens is the water garden outside the front door of the house. The brick is a good anchor for nymphs ready to make the transition to adult form.

The newly emerged adults use their shed skin as an anchor upon which they hold while allowing their wings to expand and their exoskeleton to harden enough to allow flight. This is a very precarious time for the adult. A fall could cause damage that would make flight impossible for the dragonfly and result in its death. It’s a marvel that any of them survive this critical period.

Most make it to the flying adult stage and manage to spread themselves widely across the landscape. Fortunately for me, dragonflies will hunt far from water. Otherwise I would have few opportunities to observe them. I’m seeing many of these female Common Whitetails.

I’m not seeing the variety of species that I’ve seen in the past, but there’s still a lot of summer left. The Calico Pennant is an attractive species. This is a female.

Widow Skimmers are the most common species found in my fields. This is a female.

Many species of dragonflies exhibit sexual dimorphism, meaning the males, like this Widow Skimmer, have a different coloration or pattern than the females. I tend to find far more females than I do males. I once thought that this was due to the male’s habit of defending breeding territories near suitable water bodies. This may indeed reduce the number of males you find in the fields, but then I learned that there was another reason I was seeing so many females.

Adult dragonflies do not emerge with their full coloration. It takes several days for the color to develop and the pattern to settle into its final form. During this development stage, males pass through a phase when they resemble females, so a casual observation would give you a count with females outnumbering the males. That can cause some confusion for the beginning dragonfly enthusiast. I’m thinking this is a young male Widow Skimmer. It looks an awful lot like that female.

A July Pond

Some of you see a pond looking much like it did a couple of months ago and wonder why I consider it such a spectacular sight. The simple reason is, because I normally don’t have a pond in July. In a typical year the best I can manage in the third week of July is a mud flat. By August I should be able to walk across the bottom without getting mud on my shoes.

I love to dabble in water and this pond rates quite high in dabblability. I’ll spend many hours around the pond in the next few months watching various aquatic organisms colonize what now appears to be a permanent body of water. The reeds are taking advantage of the extra water to expand their colony.

The willows and dogwoods lining the bank also flourish in the wet soil. They’ll pay for their exuberance in the next dry year. Their life is one of expansion and die-back dictated by yearly fluctuations in weather patterns, but their patterns match stride for stride so neither has advantage at any time. Although there’s constant change, there’s also stability in the community as a whole.

Part of the pond bank is kept cleared. This is partly because the electric right-of way crosses the pond dam and partly because it’s really hard to dabble in the water when you have to fight the vegetation to get to it. This also gives a place for the Solitary Sandpiper to run when it visits each year.

For a pond that’s only 70 feet across at the widest point, there’s a great diversity of vegetation growing along the bank. Shrubs, grasses and forbs all have a place around the pond. There are moisture loving plants that appear here only in exceptionally wet years. This will be their year to replenish the supply of seed that tries each year to produce another generation of plants, but more often than not is doomed to die.

The crayfish love this kind of weather. There’s enough water coming in to allow a constant flow to travel through the crayfish burrow. The flow of water is not very fast, but it is constant. Around the edge of this burrow you can just see a slight downward bend to the algae and other detritus as it is gently pulled by the moving water. The scat lovers among us may notice the short segments of crayfish droppings down and left of the burrow. These were left by the owner of the burrow after a night trip around the pond bottom in search of food.

Eastern Cricket Frogs are everywhere. You can hear their clicking call day and night. This is a late breeding species that seldom has a chance to successfully breed in the pond. This may be their year.

The fun in having the pond hold water all year is the opportunity to see species like this Twelve-Spotter Skimmer, that don’t normally visit. I also enjoy seeing the speed at which organisms take advantage of what is essentially a newly developed habitat. New amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, insects and a host of other invertebrates seem to appear every day to claim a part of this virgin territory. They may remain for a year or two, or they may die without producing a new generation, but the ability to exploit this new resource is a fascinating study.

I don’t think anything as beautiful as the Common Green Darner should have “common” as part of its name. Common should be replaced with Brilliant or Spectacular. A late season pond is the only thing that gets these big dragonflies to sit still long enough for a good look. Most years I must be content with watching the Green Darner flocks looping and buzzing over the fields. If I find one at rest, it’s because it was injured. As long as the pond has water, I’ll get a lot of good views of this species. Rain on the way means pond’s gonna stay. I just made up that saying. I can hear thunder in the distance.

Dragons and Damsels

The excess rain may cause some problems, but I’ve been enjoying having so much water in the pond. By the Fourth of July the pond is normally so shallow that the raccoons can wade into the middle and dine on any remaining tadpoles or large insects. The pond level now is more typical of what you would find in April and those insects that require a larger body of water are swarming in. The rushes are not completely inundated and provide the perfect structure for aquatic insects to use for egg laying.

The air around the pond is a constant buzz of dragonfly wings. Some species, like this Common Whitetail, have established territories and stand guard from some stationary vantage point. Common Green Darners and some others never seem to land and continually circle the pond, being chased by different individuals as they cross from one territory to another.

One of the most common dragonflies is the Blue Dasher. Several of this species can usually be found around the water garden each year, but with the pond available, they are here in amazing numbers.

Blue Dashers will often raise their abdomen until it points directly upward. Literature suggests that they point the tip of the abdomen toward the sun in order to reduce exposure and avoid overheating. I noticed some individuals exhibiting this posture in the shade. This photo was taken in late afternoon and this west facing dasher increased its exposure to the sun by assuming this posture. The temperature was about 90 degrees F, so the insects were probably warm. Maybe the up abdomen posture is a cooling strategy that works by other means than just reducing contact with the sun’s rays.

Here is a pair of Southern Spreadwing damselflies. Spreadwings are usually noticeably larger than the common damselflies and hold their wings apart when at rest. The female places her eggs above the water line and inside living plant stems. The female of this pair probed every stem they landed on, but I couldn’t tell if she was actually laying any eggs.

This damselfly is one of the bluets, and holds its wings together while at rest. These damselflies always seem so dainty and fragile. It’s hard to think of them as winged killers that spend their days munching away on mosquitoes and other small insects. I’ve watched damselfly larvae in an aquarium eat mosquito larvae as fast as they could be caught. They may be small, but they are certainly not helpless.

Dragonflies

I began working on dragonfly identification last summer. My strategy is to get shots of every dragonfly I see. I then sit with the computer image before me and my reference books to the side and try to match the image to the descriptions. Dragonflies are a wonderful group to study. They are beautiful creatures, their habits and life histories are fascinating and best of all, you can get references and identification guides that allow you to identify the adult form of every species you are likely to see in your area. This Blue Corporal was my first encounter of the year.

The Blue Corporal is one of several species where the males change colors as they mature. This is the coloration of pattern or the female or the young male. Considered an uncommon species in Ohio, there is speculation that it is one of those species that is expanding its range northward. I found them everywhere in the prairies and barrens.

The shadows on the rock make it appear that this individual has an extra set of wings. This species spent a lot of time perching on the ground and never moved very far when disturbed. That describes the behavior of most of the dragonflies I’ve identified so far. I’ve seen many other interesting species, but they seem to spend all of their time in the air and I can’t get a picture.

I think of antiques when I see this species. The browns give the appearance of age and the abdomen looks as if it was of a special wood carefully carved, painted and preserved. This is the Springtime Darner, a common species that may be able to utilize the Blue Jay Barrens creek during their aquatic phase. Lack of reliable surface water here is a definite limiting factor for successful dragonfly reproduction.

Wing venation is one of the important characteristics that allows you to be certain of your identification. Fortunately, in the majority of species it’s fairly easy to see the veins in photographs. It can still get confusing. In this individual the venation indicates that it should be a female, but the restriction in the abdomen is indicative of a male. Well, I’m satisfied for now just to be able to figure out the species.

Dragonfly Emergence

There’s nothing like fresh dragonfly in the morning. I found this guy newly emerged from the water garden yesterday morning. This is one of the reasons I built a water garden outside my door. At this stage I can’t make a positive identification. I found him as I was leaving for work so the sun was not quite up. I don’t do very well taking photos in low light levels, so things are a little bit unfocused. That’s similar to the way I feel as I leave for work on a typical Friday morning.

This is a photo of the same Dragonfly using the flash. The flash always gives a harshness to the photos, so I usually don’t use it. I think this would have made a really good photo if it could have been backlit by the sun, but I didn’t have time to wait for the sun to come up. Maybe another time.