northeast-flora-and-fauna

Here are a couple of Orange Bluets who are propagating the species. Of course most of bluets are ... wait for it ... blue! Like these guys and these guys . You could call the Orange Bluets "the orange sheep of the family" ... except that the bluets are a genus, not a family. Their family is the narrow-winged damselflies , a diversely colored family where members can be red, green, yellow, or purple in addition to blue and orange. Somewhat oddly, my pictures of them are disproportionately related to breeding; besides this picture of a mating pair, my previous post appeared to show egg-laying . June 29, 2023 at Sourland Mountain Preserve Photo 301252443, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

In contrast to the (frequently vividly) blue bluets I posted Wednesday and Thursday (and earlier ), I also saw a pair of  Orange Bluets  in tandem last spring. You might be thinking: "If it's orange, it should be called something else, like an oranget or something". Let me defend the name a bit: The bluets are their closest relatives, and while it's a little unfortunate that the genus was named after a trait this particular species doesn't have as adults, there are more egregious naming problems out there [1]. As you might have picked up on from the preceding bullet item, immature Orange Bluets actually are a pale blue, though they outgrow it by the time they're ready to breed. In some other species of bluet, only the males are blue. The Orange Bluet isn't the only bluet where the males are not blue either. In my area the Vesper Bluet (yellow) and the Scarlet Bluet (see if you can guess their color) are the other non-blue bluets. I suspect this partic...

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 ...