There is a small freshwater wetland adjacent to our new apartment in Corvallis. A very shallow creek and pool is vegetated with large hummocks of Juncus effusus and an assortment of other plants. Tiny fish were abundant, the fatter ones (maybe full of eggs) darting away from short distance advances made by the smaller ones. In the strong afternoon sun today, bluish damselflies and large dragonflies with blatant black stripes on their wings flitted about. The ones with black on the wings were perhaps the common whitetail (Libellula lydia), a widespread species in the US (Haggard and Haggard 2006). Rarely, one of the whitetails would land on a sharp shoot of Juncus, but mostly these just zipped about for some unknown purpose, neither forging nor mating being obvious aims of their activity.
Dragonflies evoke images of very pre-historic times, when the animals and plants that dominated the surface of the earth we imagine to have looked like robotic creatures suited for a harsher world, more geometric and segmented than elegant. Dragons and damsels are beautiful insects and among my favorites. Juveniles are called naiads and live in freshwater habitats; both the naiads and adults are predators (Powell and Hogue 1979, Haggard and Haggard 2006).
Below is a shot of a colorful damsel I found a few years ago in the California Sierras that was calm enough to allow me to get very close:
References:
Haggard P and Haggard J. 2006. Insects of the Pacific Northwest. Timber Press.
Powell JA and Hogue CL. 1979. California Insects. University of California Press.
