Female Blue Dasher

I see lots of male Blue Dashers but see females less frequently. I think this is a female. Certainly there's no pruinose, the eyes are brown rather than the blue-green of adult males, the end of the abdomen doesn't appear to have "claspers" [1], and the abdomen looks shorter than I usually see on Blue Dashers.

Of course, immature males can have reddish-brown eyes and lack pruinose while claspers can be a little hard to see and abdomen length is a somewhat subjective field mark. For contrast, here's one that I convinced myself to be an immature male.

I'm not sure why I see so many presumably male Blue Dashers and relatively few females, though the territorial nature of the males is presumably a factor. Rather than spending almost all their time eating prey and hiding from predators until they're ready to mate like the females, the males aggressively defend territories near water where I know to look for them. Perhaps while the females are discreetly chowing down on a flower fly away from the action, the males are defiantly attacking each other out in the open.

July 9, 2022 at Duke Farms
Photo 221316953, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

[1] Claspers are used by male dragonflies to hold female dragonflies in place while mating.


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