The BugLady and her camera have been skulking about the pond edges, feeding the mosquitoes and looking for damselflies, and there are now has many fuzzy damselfly images on the cutting room floor. Damselflies often hang out where it is dark and green and leafy (and protected from predators, which include dragonflies), and generally stay below waist height.
The BugLady has been a fan of predators since she was old enough to lisp out the word. She likes the cuts of their collective jibs and their matter-of-fact fierceness. To her, the “eat-ers” are far more interesting than the “eat-ees.”
The young of Slender Spreadwing Damselflies live underwater, and then climb out onto land/vegetation, emerge from their larval exoskeletons, and fly away. They are carnivorous in both stages. They are found near shaded, permanent ponds and slow streams over the eastern half of the U.S. in July, August and September. The male’s abdomen, proportionally longer than female’s, lacks the light-colored tip of some other spreadwings.
Like dragonflies, Damselflies are in the Order Odonata. Despite the fact that the immature insect looks very different than the adult, like dragonflies they practice simple/incomplete metamorphosis, growing through eggYmdash;naiad—adult stages. Like dragonflies, their nurseries are aquatic, often in the quiet waters of the pond’s edge.