northeast-flora-and-fauna

After all my talk about blue dragonflies, you'll all be excited to know that today I'm talking about something much different: blue damselflies like this Blue-fronted Dancer . 😁 The 1st thing to look at when identifying these guys is to look at how they hold their wings. If the wings were held at the same height as the abdomen, we'd have to rule out a lot of bluets . But this damselfly is holding its wings completely above the abdomen, something you normally see only in dancers and sprites . seriously cutting down the number of damselflies you need to consider. The next most important thing to consider is that the thorax is almost completely blue, with only a small number of very thin black lines going from front to back. Relatively few damselflies look like that. Finally the front segments of the abdomen are almost entirely black, with only the last 3 being blue. That's generally considered to be the clincher for a Blue-fronted Dancer. Apparently it's much trick...

Okay, maybe it's a stretch to consider Eastern Amberwing dragonflies of waving at you, though their wings do beat at a rapid rate.  These are considered to be the 2nd smallest dragonfly in the country behind a dragonfly I've never seen despite NJ being part of its range, the Elfin Skimmer . (There are other odonates like some bluet and sprite damselflies that are of similar length and probably less mass though.) Only the males have that distinctive amber coloring. (Like with many odonates (and some birds) I might not recognize the less distinctive females unless I also saw the males around. Here are a couple of these guys I met last summer.) July 28, 2021 at Sourland Mountain Preserve Photo 148654062, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) July 28, 2021 at Sourland Mountain Preserve Photo 148654237, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)