Species Spotlight: Emma's Dancer

In the spotlight today is a beautifully-colored damselfly—Emma's Dancer. As with other dancers, this damselfly holds its wing above the abdomen when perched. In addition, it has a lovely lavender color on the thorax. Most of the abdomen is also lavender, with a contrasting blue tip.

Here's a male from Lower Crab Creek near Beverly, WA on the Columbia River:



Before finding this species at Lower Crab Creek, we had seen it only a couple times before near Bend, OR; in those cases, however, we generally saw just a single individual. At Crab Creek, they were the most numerous damselfly.

Here's another male, with a bit different lighting showing off the lavender color:



A final male, with even different lighting. It shows the range of colors observed in this species:



We saw lots of females at Crab Creek as well. Here's a male and female in tandem preparing to lay eggs:



Here's a close up of the female. Notice her light brown color, and light stigmas. In addition, the ovipositor is clearly visible at the tip of the abdomen—all damselflies use ovipositors, but many dragonflies use an egg scoop instead, and just drop their eggs in the water.



The next female has her hindwings spread open, and her abdomen bent, as she fends off the advances of a male:



One final look at the female, showing her wings held well above the abdomen:



This is a species that can be locally numerous, but is not particularly widespread.

Lower Crab Creek: Twelve-spotted Skimmer

We had a great time visiting Lower Crab Creek a couple weeks ago.  Here's what it looks like there.



One of the other species we enjoyed at Lower Crab Creek was the Twelve-spotted Skimmer.  Here's an example:



This species looks a lot like the Eight-spotted Skimmer but, as one might imagine, it has four extra dark spots – one at the tip of each of its long thin wings.

This is a young male, and it still shows yellow striping along the edges of the abdomen.  As it matures, the abdomen will become pruinose whitish-blue, and the yellow stripes will be hard, if not impossible, to see.  The yellow stripes remain visible at all ages in females.

Finally, notice that the front two legs are folded up and tucked behind the head.  You can see those legs just behind the eyes – in fact, the small white spots you see there are actually the "knees" of the legs; that is, the folded joints in the middle of the leg.

Lower Crab Creek, Dragonfly Eden: Emma's Dancer

Betsy and I went to Lower Crab Creek in Eastern Washington a few days ago.  The dragonfly activity there is astounding – dragonflies are definitely the most common form of wildlife in the area.  The location is about 4 miles east of the tiny town of Beverly, Washington, on Road 17 SW.  Here's a map showing the site:

The setting is spectacular, as you can see from the background of this picture of Betsy looking for dragonflies in the bushes:

We saw a number of beautiful species there, including some we don't see in Puget Sound, and a few that were new for us.  I'll start with a damselfly species that we've seen before, Emma's Dancer, but never in these numbers.  Here's the male of the species, easily identified by its lovely lavender color, and blue-tipped abdomen:

The female is a tannish-brown color:

What a beautiful damselfly.  It was so nice to have them everywhere we looked.