dragonflies
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Lily, Amberwings
Male Eastern Amberwing (Perithemis tenera) on Water Lily (Nymphaeaceae). Twisted love: Amberwings making more Amberwings. The female, who lacks the amber wings, immediately started depositing eggs on a drop of water on a water lily leaf after this acrobatic display. This species is just about an inch long, making it one of the smallest dragonflies…
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Weekend Dragonflies
Got a grip. The handsome Painted Skimmer (Libellula semifasciata), with his conspicuous orange wing pattern. Note the appendages at the tail-end of the abdomen: this is a male. He uses these to grasp females right behind the eyes (damselflies grasp by the neck). More on the wild kingdom of dragonfly sex can be found here,…
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Dragonflies
Common Whitetail (Libellua lydia) male.Twelve-spotted Skimmer (Libellua pulchella) male.Twelve-spotted Skimmer (Libellua pulchella) female.Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax lonipennis) male. Beaverpond Baskettail (Epitheca canis). (h/t to Ed Lam for the ID on this one.)
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Dragonfly Pond Watch
This morning I joined Brooklyn Bridge Park staffers and volunteers for an orientation about the Dragonfly Pond Watch they are participating in this season. As part of the Migratory Dragonfly Partnership, the Watch is gathering data about five of the sixteen known migratory dragonfly species in North America: Common Green Darner (Anax junius) Black Saddlebags…
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Far Southern Queens
Yellow Queen Honey from Greenpoint. To the Honey Festival at Beach 96th and the Boardwalk on the Rockaway Peninsula yesterday, where the beach was swarming with Black Saddlebags dragonflies. Like Monarch butterflies, the Black Saddlebags are migratory. (Until fairly recently, I didn’t know that some dragonfly species migrated. Natural history is an arena of near-infinite…
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Great Blue Skimmer
For your August weekend, Libellula virbrans, spotted today in Brooklyn Bridge Park. A male. At 2.2 inches, this is one of our larger dragonflies, and it’s a great percher: this one returned to the same cattail leaf half-a-dozen times as I watched and photographed. More common in the southeastern swamps, but reaching up to Mass.…
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Habitat
Brooklyn Bridge Park’s horticulturalist Rebecca McMackin told me recently that she consciously works to create habitat. The proof is in the animals: Spot-winged glider (Pantala hymenaea), a new species for me. A reader of this blog, in private conversation, noted how the carrion beetle thing yesterday was a little queasy, but I personally find these…
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Twelve Spotted
The Twelve-spotted skimmer (Libellula pulchella) is one of the easiest dragonflies to identify. You can even tell from the shadow. This is the female — the males have white patches between the dark spots.
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Blue Dasher
The Blue Dasher dragonfly (Pachydiplax longipennis) is common around our ponds and lakes, especially if there’s lots of vegetation in the water. The males have a chalky blue abdomen, with black tip. The females have no blue at all. But they do have tell-tale paired yellow streaks along their abdomen.Dragonflies of this species will often…
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Springtime in November
It was like spring in Prospect Park today. Late spring, even, except for the rich fall colors of the leaves and the lack of birdsong. How warm was it? There was a woman wearing a bikini in Nelly’s Lawn. Among other sun-worshippers were the turtles, brought up out of the murk by the warmth.A few…
Backyard and Beyond 