The BugLady is thankful for damselflies. Oh, not always for the identification part, but for the joy of seeing them flickering through their thickety habitats and for the thrill of the photographic chase (first you have to spot them, and then the light and the background are often terrible).
Everywhere you look, you see adult insects, young insects, and the kinds of activity that will result in them. Here are some sights from the BugLady’s walks in southeastern Wisconsin.
Damselflies are found near ponds, dancers are generally associated with slow streams and rivers. Male Dancers may defend loose territories that change daily. Damselflies aquatic naiads are short and stout and often striped/patterned. Like their Mothers, most are drab brown/olive, but the Varied dancer’s naiad has a purple tinge. Their flattened shape allows them to shelter under rocks and other debris on the bottom of wetlands. They overwinter as naiads, probably in one of their last instars.
Compared to the (mostly) much larger dragonflies, damselflies look delicate, and their eyes protrude to each side giving them a bug-eyed/hammerhead appearance. A dragonfly’s hind pair of wings is broader than its front pair, but a damselfly’s four wings are roughly equal. And while dragonflies hold their wings out to the side when they perch (usually), damselflies can hold their wings together over their backs.
It’s time again for the Annual “Twelve Bugs of Christmas” event (and, coincidentally, episode #350 in the series, by the BugLady’s numbering). Here are a (Baker’s) dozen insects that will not be getting (or who have already had) their own BOTWs. Feel free to hum along, and have a lovely Holiday.
As the Bug Season winds down, the BugLady would like to celebrate summer by sharing a baker’s dozen of the pictures she’s taken in the past few months.
With apologies to Olde English Folk Songs everywhere, here is the Second Annual Twelve Bugs of Christmas, featuring a Baker’s Dozen that were photographed this year but that did/will not appear in BOTWs. These pictures are a tribute to the joy of stumbling into the right place at the right time.
Damselflies—four bluets, a dancer, and a forktail—have in common that, here in Wisconsin at least, the males are described as “unmistakable.” Most of the 17 species of bluets in Wisconsin have a black-and-blue striped thorax and a black-and-blue abdomen. Bluets are informally divided into the “blue bluets” like the Double-striped bluet, whose predominantly blue abdomens are decorated by black stripes/rings, and the “black bluets,” whose black abdomens have blue rings/stripes.
Sedge Sprites are found across southern Canada and the northern half of the U.S. Although they are more common in the eastern part of their range, Mead calls them, surprisingly, “perhaps the most abundant damselfly in the north woods.” Midges are probably a big part of their diet, and the aquatic naiads feed on any small critters they can catch.
Ebony Jewelwings and American Rubyspots lay their eggs in the stems of submerged plants or in decaying wood in waters with a moderate current. Males guard but are not in contact with their ladies during egg laying. Other Odonates may hunt far from streams and ponds, but the Broad-winged damselflies tend to be homebodies. Rubyspots seldom gain more than a foot or two in altitude, but the BugLady has seen jewelwings six feet off the ground. They are perchers—sitting on plants or rocks and sallying forth to hunt or to defend their territories.