Azure Bluets

Here's a pair of Azure Bluets on a blade of grass in a small pond. The brighter one on the left is a male and the lighter blue one on the right is a female. Given the male has attached himself to the head of the female, it is likely they had just mated. It sounds like they stay together like this until the female lays her eggs; this is done so the male is assured that the female doesn't father somebody else's kids instead of his own. (In some cases, the female will actually submerge below the water surface to lay her eggs; if she does this, the male feels secure that ovipositing his eggs and will detach.)

Though our bluet damselflies can be difficult to ID, this is probably a pretty good identification. The Azure Bluet males are the area's bluets have blue on the 7th - 9th abdominal segments. Notice also how far down they hold their wings; the dancers tend to hold their wings a little higher than the abdomen.

Since azure basically means blue, their name has some redundancy to it. But there are also non-blue bluets like the Orange Bluet; this is what happens when someone in a taxonomic group doesn't share the same characteristic of most of its relatives. 

June 10, 2022 at the Negri Nepote Native Grassland Preserve
Photo 209943616, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)


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