July-August Nature: Dragonflies!

Though I'd seen a dragonfly or two here and there through late June and early July, or perhaps may have only been seeing some damselflies from a distance, I began to notice them out in full task force in late July, early August. Go, dragonflies! Eat those mosquitoes and gnats!


Scarlet Darter Dragonfly

I found a lovely website full of gorgeous photos of Arkansas dragonflies, which I so wanted to use on my blog, but alas, they are copyrighted, so I'll just have to send you there directly and hope I get a decent camera soon so I can take my own nature photos! Random Natural Acts: Photography and Writings by Herschel Raney.

In digging around for pictures and information, I learned that one way to distinguish a damselfly from a dragonfly is that a damselfly rests with its wings folded closed, but a dragonfly rests with wings open.

Here's an Ebony Jewelwing Damselfly and an Eastern Pondhawk Dragonfly:



Here's a Digital Dragonfly Museum put on the web by Texas A&M. And of course, the wikipedia article is pretty good. I learned that some dragonflies live in their larval stage for up to 5 years! Smaller species are larval for 2 months to three years. They then live up to 4 months (larger species) once they become flying adults. Another tidit: dragonflies always attack from below, so prey can't dive away. The culture section of the wiki article is also pretty cool... here's a tidbit I enjoyed from that, a Vietmanese weather forcasting: "Dragonflies fly at low level, it is rainy; dragonflies fly at high level, it is sunny; dragonflies fly at medium level, it is shadowy." From another site, I learned that their 80% of their brains are devoted to analyzing visual input.

Dragonflies are ancient! Oldest fossils date to 325 million years. Check out this 155 million year old fossil from Bavaria:



Related bugs this month (unfortunately we discover several when skimming the pool):

Mayflies: