A Dazzle of Damselflies

We all know about colorful names for groups of animals—like a murder of crows, or a parliament of owls. For dragonflies and damselflies, a group can be referred to as a "dazzle," which seems like an appropriate name.

At the retention pond described in the previous post we saw a dazzle of damselflies. It was a dazzle both in terms of the number of individuals, and in terms of the number of species, many of which were new to us. Here's a sampling of our damselfly observations at the pond.

First up is the Slender Bluet:



Notice the "slender" black stripe on the side of the thorax.

Along with these bluets we saw another species, the Skimming Bluet:



This species has a broader black stripe on the side of the thorax. It also has a different pattern of blue on the abdomen.

Another new bluet species for us has a name that is basically the definition of an oxymoron—the Orange Bluet:





We also saw a couple of new forktails. Here's the Fragile Forktail:



Not sure where the name comes from on this species, unless it's the "fragile" appearance of the "broken" thorax stripe that looks like an exclamation point. Also note the dark tip of the abdomen.

In addition, we saw Eastern Forktails that are very similar to the Western Forktails we see here in the West:



Notice the solid thorax stripe in this species, and the blue tip on the abdomen.

A surprise species of damselfly was the Powdered Dancer, which so far we have seen only in Arizona:



All in all, we were kept busy identifying the dazzle of damselflies at our hotel.