I really like how “friendly” dragonflies seem to be. These creatures are not as easily frightened by humans as are most large—and therefore easily visible and vulnerable—animals. Thus you can get fairly close to dragonflies for a look at them, and if you are working around your yard, you might even feel as if they are keeping you company.
A dragonfly has huge eyes with which it will watch you about as much as you watch it! It can turn its head as you change your position so you will know if it is keeping tabs on you.
However, the main reason for those large eyes is to help dragonflies find and eat other insects to survive. You may see these masters of the air catching other insects in flight or you may see them dart out from a perch on a twig or a rock to catch an insect passing by.
One of the most common species of dragonflies is the White-tailed Dragonfly, so called because it sports a white “tail” that is more accurately known as its abdomen.
Depending upon the lighting conditions, the tail sometimes looks like it is a pale blue, so it helps to also notice if the dragonfly has a thick amber (orangey-brown) marking across each of its four wings. These two field marks (markings that are easily distinguished while “in the field” or outdoors) conclusively identify this insect.
A White-tailed Dragonfly overwinters in the larval or immature stage that is known as a “nymph” or “naiad.” Nymphs look entirely different from adults and are much more difficult to see because they are underwater.
However, if you carefully scoop up some of the muck from the bottom or the edge of a pond, you may find one or a few of these little animals hiding in the mud. A dragonfly nymph is only about half an inch long, with a segmented dark brown body and six long legs. It feeds on other animals, just as an adult does.
When a nymph is mature, it crawls out of the water, up a plant stem, and breaks out of its aquatic skin (exoskeleton) that is no longer useful for its adult life in the air. The new form that emerges is the one we recognize so well.
Before taking flight, a dragonfly must rest for several hours while its wings dry and its body hardens. It may be several days before the adult colors fully develop.
Then it feeds for a few weeks in yards, woods, and fields. It’s only when the males and females are ready to mate that they then return to a pond or slow-moving river.
Naturalist Marlene A. Condon is the author/photographer of The Nature-friendly Garden: Creating a Backyard Haven for Plants, Wildlife, and People (Stackpole Books; information at www.marlenecondon.com). If you have a question about plants or animals, or gardening in a nature-friendly manner, send it to [email protected] and please watch for an answer in this paper
