Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Dragonflies and Damselflies from the Weekend

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I saw a lot of butterflies at Fairview Farm Wildlife Preserve on Saturday. In addition to the butterflies, there were a lot of dragonflies and damselflies flying in the preserve's meadows. This post includes a few of those odonates, as well as a few from two other sites. Above is a Common Green Darner, which is either an adult female or a juvenile. I only saw a few of these on Saturday, but they can be quite plentiful, especially during their fall migration.

Another dragonfly at the preserve was this female Eastern Pondhawk. There were a lot of this species, and not just around the preserve's pond.

There were also quite a few odonates at the nearby Leonard J.Buck Garden. Both of these species, Blue Dasher and Slaty Skimmer were active around the ponds.

Violet Dancers (the northern subspecies of Variable Dancer) were also active around the ponds.

I was surprised to see this female Autumn Meadowhawk, as the peak flight dates for this species are usually in September and October.

During my visit to Jamaica Bay on Friday, I saw a few odonates in addition to the birds. Among the most plentiful were Familiar Bluets, like this one.