Dragons

Widow Skimmer femaleWidow Skimmer maleHalloween Pennant maleCommon Green Darner maleWell, perhaps not Dragons to you and I, but if you're a small bug, they might as well be dragons! There seemed to be a lot of dragonflies and butterflies around today. Fortunately, there weren't too many mosquitos around (just as well because I forgot the Off! today).

I am slowly learning some of the common dragonfly species and I think I can tell the difference between a few of the main families. Of the four pictured here, the top three are all in the Skimmer family, while the last one is of the Darner family.

The Widow Skimmer male & female are easy to tell apart, the males looking largely like the females but having a blue body and blue in the wings, while the females have a black & yellow body and only brown in the wings.

The Halloween Pennant male can be distinguished from the female largely by the red tips visible on all four wings. The female also has a yellower stripe down its body. I don't think I've seen this species before but as I've not really looked that hard at them, I couldn't be sure.

Finally, the Green Darner is one of those dragonflies that seems to spend far more time in the air than the skimmers (I'm sure an entomologist could tell me why). I do believe this is the first dragonfly I've ever caught actually flying. I'm just a beginner, but I don't understand why the Green Darner's most obvious color is blue!? Looking closely, I can see that the body is green, while the tail is blue. If you look closely at this Green Darner, you will see that the left front wing is significantly damaged - but it doesn't appear to bother it much.

Well, I will continue to look at these little flying machines & see if I can learn a few more. I've also been photographing and identifying many of the wildflowers I see. Hopefully I will eventually be able to use that information to say I see x bird on y plant.