Dragonflies and a Presentation in Winthrop

Betsy and I gave a dragonfly presentation last week at the Merc Playhouse in Twisp, near Winthrop, WA, for the Methow Conservancy. The presentation was well attended, and there were lots of good questions—it was a lot of fun. Thanks to all who came out on a smoky evening to learn more about dragonflies.

The next day, we led a field trip to Beaver Pond, near Sun Mountain Lodge. Later in the day we also stopped by Twin Lakes for a few additional species.

Here's a view of Beaver Pond from the wooden footbridge.

The view from the wooden footbridge at Beaver Pond near Sun Mountain Lodge in Winthrop, WA. This is a good place to see lots of dragonflies, and to watch for the splash-dunk/spin-dry behavior. We saw a few examples during our field trip.

This is the other end of Beaver Pond. Notice the darner flying by at the top of the photo.



We saw lots of darners flying back and forth over the water. A few meadowhawks were in the bushes along the shoreline, in addition to many damselflies.

We were also fortunate to see the splash-dunk/spin-dry behavior a couple times. The footbridge is a great place to see the behavior—in fact, the spin-dry at this location is performed at eye level, making it particularly easy to observe. We had a couple good views of this rare phenomenon.

Here's our species list for the field trip:

Damselflies
Spotted Spreadwing
Northern/Boreal Bluet
Tule Bluet
Pacific Forktail
Western Forktail

Dragonflies
Paddle-tailed Darner (Happy Face)
Canada Darner
Blue-eyed Darner
Variable Darner
Striped Meadowhawk
White-faced Meadowhawk
Black Meadowhawk
Cherry-faced Meadowhawk
Eight-spotted Skimmer

At the end of the trip we encountered an interesting situation at Twin Lakes. It was a female damselfly with the abdomen of a male attached to her. What likely happened is that a dragonfly at the lake captured a pair of damselflies flying together in tandem. It then snipped off the thorax of the male for a nice snack, dropping the rest of the pair into the vegetation. Here's a detailed discussion of a similar event observed at Cranberry Lake:

http://thedragonflywhisperer.blogspot.com/2012/09/15-damselflies-darner-predation-in.html

This was truly a damsel in distress, but one of our participants kindly removed the male's abdomen, freeing the female to continue her life unencumbered.

Here's the poster advertising the talk: