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Dragonfly pictures
Hi!
I just got a new camera and have been taking all kinds of pictures (especially of dragonflies…MY FAVORITE!) Is there anything interesting you can tell me about any of these dragonflies? I love your website, by the way!
Jaime

Blue Dasher	Green Clearwing

Hi Jaime,
Your photos are great. I see you are mastering that new camera. We have identified two of your dragonflies. One is a Green Darner, Anax junius, also known as the Snake Doctor or Darning Needle. It is one of the fastest and biggest of the common dragonflies. The thorax is green and abdomen blue or sometimes gray. The compound eyes are often the color of milk chocolate. The Green Clearwing, Erythemis simplicicollis, has a bright green face and thorax with a green abdomen spotted with brown. It frequently rests on bare earth as your photo proves. We will try to identify your other dragonflies when time allows. Though we do not own this book, we have others in the series and can highly recommend it: Dragonflies Through Binoculars: A Field Guide to Dragonflies of North America (Butterflies and Others Through Binoculars Field Guide Series) by Sidney W. Dunkle

Update (01/29/2006)
odonata
Hi, my name is Larry Hamrin. While researching dragonflies, I came across your site. I don’t consider myself an expert at identifying dragonflies, but I would like to comment on some of the dragonflies on your website. The dragonfly you identify as a green darner looks like an immature Blue Dasher. By immature I mean a dragonfly after it has emerged but before it has aquired its fully adult coloration. Actually a freshly emerged dragonfly is refered to as ” teneral”, so it’s really between teneral and fully matured Here is a website with a blue dasher where the dragonfly is refered to as immature. The male will have a coloration somewhat like a female at first, then change to its normal color as it gets older.
Thank you for your time
Larry Hamrin

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