California Darner

The earliest, and smallest, darner in our area is the California Darner.  Here's a shot from my recent trip to Cranberry Lake:

California Darner, male.  You can clearly see the "egg tooth" on the front of its thorax, which it uses to break through the larval skin when it emerges as an adult.

Notice the lack of a front stripe on the thorax, the cream-colored spots on the tenth segment of the abdomen, and the simple (blade shaped) appendages – all key features of California Darners.  Also notice that it is perched on the ground, another characteristic of these darners.  The other common darners in our area – Blue-eyed Darner, Paddle-tailed Darner, Shadow Darner – almost always perch in a bush at hip to shoulder height.  In our area, a darner on the ground is quite likely to be a California Darner, especially early in the season.

There were a dozen or more California Darners flying over the meadow and landing on the ground at Cranberry Lake.  When you walk through the grass you flush another darner every few steps.  At one point I saw a pair in tandem being chased by a single  male.  The lone male grabbed the male in tandem and they crashed to the ground.  The photos below show the pair in tandem and the lone male sitting on top.  After a few moments the male in tandem took off, displacing the lone male, and the pair flew high up into the trees.

A male California Darner on top of a pair in tandem.  Apparently it was trying to break up the pair so it could replace the original male.

The pair stays attached and takes off, displacing the lone male.

Four-spotted Skimmer

One of the dragonflies seen a couple days ago at Cranberry Lake was the Four-spotted Skimmer.  Here's a photo of one from that day:

Four-spotted Skimmer, male.  Notice the dark spots at the nodus (center of leading edge) that give this dragonfly its name.  The dark spots near the wing tips (the stigma) don't count, since all dragonflies have them.  Also, note how the front two legs are folded up and tucked behind the head, just as they are during flight.

Four-spotted Skimmers have a high perching index (about 80 – 90%), and hence are easy to observe and photograph.  If you see a golden brown dragonfly in our area it's almost certainly a Four-spotted Skimmer, so the ID is fairly easy as well.  Females look the same as males, except a bit duller in color.

Mating is a rapid affair with these dragonflies.  Their short, pudgy abdomens aren't particularly flexible, and hence they stay in the wheel position for only about 10 to 15 seconds.  After mating, the female dips the tip of her abdomen repeatedly into the water to lay eggs while the male hovers above for protection.  They don't stay attached in tandem during egg laying, as do many meadowhawks, because their inflexible abdomens aren't well suited for that kind of maneuver.

Anacortes – The New Emerald City?

It's well known that Seattle goes by the nickname "The Emerald City," but yesterday Anacortes had reason to use that name as well.  It was home to at least two American Emeralds, a small dark dragonfly with beautiful green eyes.  Here are a couple photos:

American Emerald, male.  Notice the single white ring hear the base of the abdomen.  Ringed Emeralds have white rings at the base of each segment along the abdomen, and Mountain Emeralds have no white rings at all.

American Emerald, male.  Notice the shape of the abdomen – it starts narrow, widens out, and then narrows again near the tip.

The emeralds were at Cranberry Lake, where I saw my first dragonflies in Washington State this year.  In addition to the emeralds, there were several Four-spotted Skimmers, and a dozen or more California Darners.

The emeralds are about the same size as Four-spotted Skimmers, but they are much darker and skinnier in flight.  Also, they look "deep chested" – that is, the thorax seems oversized in comparison with the rest of the body.  When they fly toward you their eyes give an unmistakable flash of green.

The common emeralds in our area are the American Emerald, the Ringed Emerald, and the Mountain Emerald.  The American Emerald is distinguished by having a single white ring near the base of the abdomen, as you can see in the photos above, whereas the Ringed Emerald has white rings at the base of each segment of the abdomen.  See the following link for a look at a Ringed Emerald:

http://thedragonflywhisperer.blogspot.com/2012/01/dragonflying-at-mount-shuksun.html

In contrast, the Mountain Emerald has no white rings on the abdomen, but instead has golden stripes on the sides of the thorax.

As you can see in these photos, American Emeralds like to perch on the ground.  They have a rather low perching index (perhaps around 50%), but with patience you can follow them until they land and get a great view.  Seeing those eyes close up is worth the wait.

Cardinal Meadowhawks: An Early Dragonfly

The three most common meadowhawks in our area are the Cardinal Meadowhawk, Striped Meadowhawk, and Autumn Meadowhwak.

Cardinal Meadowhawks are the first to fly, appearing as early as mid May.  Striped Meadowhawks become common in July, and Autumn Meadowhawks show up in numbers in August.  By the way, the Autumn Meadow is our latest flying dragonfly – hence its name – and it can be seen well into November.

The photos below are of Cardinal Meadowhawks in Vacaville, California in late May.  If you see a red dragonfly in our area in the next several weeks it'll probably be a Cardinal Meadowhawk.  The best field marks for Cardinal Meadowhawks are white spots on the side of the thorax and dark concentrations of red at the base of the wings.  Look for these marks in the following photos:

Cardinal Meadowhawk, male.  Notice the white spot on the thorax and the dark red at the base of the wings.  The four white spots are often hard to see when covered by the wings, as here, but the dark red in the wings is almost always visible.

Cardinal Meadowhawk, male.  One of the four white spots on the thorax is visible, as is the dark red at wing base.

Cardinal Meadowhawk, immature female.  The tiny egg scoop near the tip of the abdomen shows it's a female, and the white spots and dark red in wings shows its a Cardinal.  This individual will become slightly more colorful as it matures.  Teneral (freshly emerged) meadowhawks are often yellow, and become red with age.

In the field, male Cardinal Meadowhawks are intensely red.  Sometimes it's hard to believe a living creature can be that colorful – when you see one you'll know what I mean.

The Blue Dashers Are Back

Dragonfly season is in full swing now here in Arizona.  Betsy and I went to the Gilbert Water Ranch a few days ago, and dragonflies were everywhere.  One of the most common dragonflies there were the Blue Dashers, which are also one of the most photogenic of dragonflies.  Here are a couple pictures from our visit to the Water Ranch.

Not only are these dragonflies great for photography, they are also incredibly widespread.  We've seen them everywhere we've gone dragonflying, including Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Texas, and Florida.

A Swarm of Meadowhawks

Recent reports of mass gatherings of dragonflies make it seem there is “something in the air” when it comes to events like these.  Large numbers of baskettails have been observed in Canada, and a large gathering of Striped Meadowhawks was recently seen in Oregon.

In my case, the dragonflies involved were Autumn Meadowhawks.  These friendly dragonflies, which like to land on people, are a common sight at Cranberry Lake in Anacortes, Washington late in the season.

Betsy experiences a red dragonfly on the shoulder, and a second one on her hat.  Both dragonflies are male Autumn Meadowhawks, the friendliest dragonfly we know.

Autumn Meadowhawks are well described by a famous haiku:

Red dragonfly on my shoulder,

Calls me his friend.

Autumn has arrived.

I’ve often had them “on my shoulder,” but last autumn I had them covering my entire body – literally from head to toe.  Here’s what happened.

I went to Cranberry Lake on November 9, 2011 to observe the dragonfly activity.  The weather was sunny and calm, with an air temperature of 57 ˚F.  On other similar days I would observe about a dozen Autumn Meadowhawks and half a dozen Shadow Darners.  On this day, however, I immediately realized something was different – there were so many Autumn Meadowhawks on the gravel walking path that I had to choose my steps carefully to keep from stepping on them.

I walked to some bushes near the shore to see if any darners were perched there, but as soon as I stood still for a moment the meadowhawks began to gather on me.  It felt like a scene from Hitchcock’s movie, The Birds.  They were landing all over me in a frenzy.  I took some pictures showing the ones perched from my waist down, but as I took those pictures I could feel them perched on my arms, my upper body, my head, even on my face.  The pictures show over 30 on my lower body, and I would estimate there were 50 or more on my body as a whole.  I’ve had several Autumn Meadowhawks land on me before, but never anything like this.  

A gathering of Autumn Meadowhawks at Cranberry Lake in Anacortes, Washington on November 9, 2011.

The ones pictured on my lower body are only half the story – they covered me from head to toe.  It felt like a scene out of The Birds.

After taking a few pictures I looked up and saw that the air was just “full” of meadowhawks flying in all directions, hooking up in tandem or attempting to hook up.  It was similar to a mass flight of winged ants or termites.  A few darners were flying too, picking off individual meadowhawks, and also pairs in tandem, and heading for the bushes or trees to enjoy their catch.  It was quite a scene.  It’s hard to estimate the number of meadowhawks, but it must have been in the several hundreds.

I decided to go home and bring Betsy to see this phenomenon.  As I walked back to the car the meadowhawks went along for the ride on my body.  The car was a considerable distance away, and in the shade, but there were still a dozen or more dragonflies on me when I got there.  I had to “shoo” them away to keep them from getting in the car with me – though one managed to do so anyway.

When Betsy and I returned a few minutes later, the activity level was a bit lower, though still intense.  We marveled at the meadowhawks that seemed to be everywhere we looked, including all over us.  Along the shore we observed an egg-laying frenzy, with intense competition for prime sites.  As a result of the competition, many meadowhawks were being knocked into the water where they became stuck.  We ended up rescuing a dozen or more.

As we watched the egg-laying activity, the shadows of the afternoon (it was about 2:00 pm at this point) began to lengthen.  We expected to see the meadowhawks moving along the shore to stay in the sunlit areas, but at one point – quite suddenly – we noticed that the egg laying had ceased, and the air was now clear of meadowhawks.  It was almost as if someone had flipped a switch.  We’re not sure what the signal for stopping was – it wasn’t evident to us – but the meadowhawks seemed to respond en masse.

We returned the next several days, but each time the activity was completely normal again, with just a dozen or so meadowhawks along the shore.  The mass behavior seen on November 9 was a short-lived phenomenon, but one we’re happy to have experienced.

A Four-Star Teneral

A teneral is a dragonfly (or other insect) that has just undergone moulting.  In photo below, a dragonfly has just emerged from its last larval stage to become a winged adult.  It has given up the underwater existence it's known all its life to become an air-breathing, flying adult.  It doesn't moult again.

The teneral pictured above is a male Western Pondhawk.  You can tell it's a male by the presence of hamules, the bumpy structure that projects downward near the base of the abdomen.  The hamules are used to "latch" the male and female together during mating in the wheel position.  In a female, the underside of the abdomen near the base is smooth.  

It's always important to know which sex you're looking at when identifying dragonflies, but with this species it's particularly helpful because both sexes start off brilliant green.  Female pondhawks stay green as they mature, but the males turn from green to blue in stages starting at the tip of the abdomen and progressing toward the head.  The body and eyes of the adult male are solid blue, only the face remains green – in fact, the green face is a good distinguishing feature to separate male Western Pondhawks from male Blue Dashers, which have a white face.

Tenerals have a "fresh" look to them, with distinctively vivid colors.  The wings of a teneral look almost like cellophane.  In fact, the wings haven't completely hardened at this stage of a dragonfly's life, and as a result the flight of tenerals is usually quite weak and slow – almost like the fluttering flight of winged termites.  In fact, it's often possible to recognize a teneral from some distance because of its characteristic flight behavior.  When a dragonfly is fully mature, however, its flight becomes strong and fast, as you would expect for a top predator.

Blue-eyed Darner

A beautiful, male Blue-eyed Darner rests on my finger at Cranberry Lake.  The brilliant blue eyes are a particularly striking feature of this species.  This is a "textbook" view of the Blue-eyed Darner, and though it shows the beauty of the animal, it misses the interesting appearance of its face.

Here's a head-on view of the Blue-eyed Darner.  Notice the two prominent primary pseudopupils that seem to be looking right at us.  This species lacks the heavy "eyebrows" and dark "smile line" of the Paddle-tailed Darner (Happy-face), but it still has a nice expression.  The side view above gives no hint of what this dragonfly looks like when viewed from the front.

An Unusual Blue-eyed Darner

A male Blue-eyed Darner (note the narrow waist on segment 3) perches in the bushes at Cranberry Lake, in Anacortes, WA.  This is an older individual, as evidenced by the scuffed up wings and the ragged trailing edge of its left hindwing.  From this distance it's clear that something is odd about its right eye, which seems to have a dark spot on it.  I came in closer to get a better look.

Now it's clear that the dark spot is actually something that projects out from the eye.

A closer look shows that the dark spot has the same hexagonal grid as in the eye itself.  Apparently it resulted from some abnormality in the growth of the eye.

I lifted the dragonfly onto my finger for a better look.  The dark spot is on the upper edge of the dorsal fovea, which extends down to a point just behind the primary pseudopupil.  The secondary pseudopupils form a nice hexagonal lattice, as one would expect.

The Happy-face Dragonfly

This is the first picture I took of a Happy-face Dragonfly.  When I took the picture, on October 22, 2006, I had no idea its face looked like this – it wasn't until I got home and viewed the picture on the computer that I realized what I had discovered.  This picture is what really "hooked" me on dragonflies.

The official common name of this dragonfly is the Paddle-tailed Darner.

Dragonflying at Mount Shuksun

On October 17, 2011, Betsy and I went to Picture Lake near Mount Baker.  Picture Lake is just before you get to the Mount Baker ski area, and it provides an incredible reflected view of Mount Shuksun.  A little later in the season the fall colors would be more prominent, yielding an even more impressive view.

Betsy, with Picture Lake and Mount Shuksun in the background.  This picture was taken shortly after we arrived, when there was still a bit of fog near the summit of Shuksun.  The temperature at this point was a brisk 46 ˚F, but the sun and lack of a breeze made it feel quite comfortable.  It warmed up during the time we were there, and by lunchtime it was 64 ˚F.

This is me at Picture Lake a little while later after the fog had burned off.  When we first arrived we didn't see any dragonflies to whisper to, but shortly thereafter the activity was pretty good.

The greatest activity that day was provided by the Ringed Emeralds.  The first one we saw was this dead male found along the shoreline.  A darner helped us find it by stopping on his patrol of the shoreline to check it out more carefully – in case it might happen to be a female darner.  The Ringed Emerald has an iridescent green thorax, green eyes, and thin white rings at the base of each abdominal segment.

We saw a few darners at the lake.  All that we could see well were Paddle-tailed Darners – Mr. Happy Face.  

The Ringed Emeralds were plentiful as the air warmed up a few degrees.  You could see them everywhere along the shoreline: pairs flying in tandem; males chasing females and other males; females laying eggs with males hovering nearby for protection.  Here a female dips her abdomen into the water to deposit eggs (water temperature was 46 ˚F).  

The water was so clear that I spent some time looking to see if I could spot the eggs the female was laying.  With a little practice I could.  The eggs came out in a small mucus string of maybe 6 or 8 greenish eggs, a lot like miniature frog eggs.  Strings start out in a tight ball, but then twist and straighten out as they drift slowly to the bottom.

Interacting With Dragonflies

Autumn Meadowhawks in the wheel position.

Interacting with dragonflies is part of the fun of dragonflying.  In the photo above a pair of Autumn Meadowhawks in the wheel position rests on my finger.  These are the latest flying dragonflies in our area, and they are very comfortable with landing on people or sitting on your finger.  Betsy and I have given them the title of "Friendliest Dragonfly."

The pleasures of interacting with dragonflies.

Nature is a delight.

One day while taking pictures of dragonflies I had a Blue-eyed Darner on my finger.  A father and his daughter stopped and asked what I was doing.  When I told them, the girl said, "Can I hold it?"  I said sure, and transferred the cooperative dragonfly from my finger to her hand.  As you can see, she was delighted with the experience.  It was a beautiful dragonfly, with incredible blue colors.  The dragonfly sat on her hand for about five minutes.  We eventually walked closer to the shore, she held her hand out, and the dragonfly took off.  She said, "Will it come back?"  "No," I said, "it has a busy life and lots of things to do."

The dragonfly had not been caught with a net or manipulated in anyway – it was a "free range" dragonfly.  I simply lifted it up from the bushes on my fingertip.  It was free to fly away any time it wanted.