More bug love
I love your site!! I just found it and will be using it to help identify some of my insect species I find up here in southwestern Manitoba in Canada. My co-workers have been teasing me lately b/c of my photos of what they call, ‘beetle porn’. I noticed you didn’t have many for the dragonflies so I thought I would send my most lovely one to you…photo that is. And if you care to tell me the species, I would great appreciate that as well, save me from looking it up!
Sherry Lynn Punak-Murphy
Natural Resource Technician/Biologist
Manitoba

Hi Sherry-Lynn,
Your photo of mating Dragonflies. It truly is wonderful. We are not that adept at exact species identification of Dragonflies. Perhaps a reader will supply us with an answer and perhaps you will do the work on the exact identification and notify us. Please include Dragonfly ID in the subject line.

Update: (07/07/2008) Mating Dragonflies
Hi Bugman:
Re: Mating Dragonflies (07/04/2008) More bug love Really nice shot! These look like American Emeralds (Cordulia shurtleffi). I am from Manitoba as well and this species is fairly common here. There are lots of good photos online; e.g.,: http://www.pbase.com/dragonhunter/image/63103267 and http://talkaboutwildlife.ca/profile/?s=741 Regards,
Karl

Hi Karl,
Thanks for doing the work on this identification.

Dragonfly
I found this very friendly fellow one morning in my back yard of Strongsville, Ohio, in June of last year. He was just sitting there, clinging to some grass. I went inside to get my camera, and he allowed me to get within inches of him to take some incredible close-ups. Eventually he tired of my attention and flew away, but I was left with about 20 amazing photographs. These are actually scaled down, the originals that I have are double the resolution.

Your Dragonfly is a Saddlebags in the genus Tramea, but we are not certain of the species. We really consider currency when posting images, so we are very happy your image was taken in June, even though it was last year.

Hero Swamp Darner?
Hello! My name is Sarah-Ellen Leonard and I’ve been checking your site daily for about 6 months now. The volume of information is impressive, as is your ability to give feedback so rapidly. You have helped me with mealybug infestations and calmed my fears about cicada killers. I haven’t had anything to send in until now: a hero swamp darner, if I have read your site correctly. My coworker here at the University of Illinois found him/her on the sidewalk this morning. He/she is almost exactly 3″ long (sorry for the lack of size reference in the photo!) and occasionally twitches in a feeble fashion. I’m afraid this lovely creature may well be a goner. I just thought a nice image of those lovely eyes would be a worthy addition to your site. Thanks for everything!
Sarah-E

Hi Sarah-E,
Thank you for your kind words of support. We believe you have correctly identified this Swamp Darner, Epiaeschna heros. There are many images on BugGuide to support this identification. While it is sad your specimen will soon expire, at least you got a wonderful photograph of a magnificent insect.

It’s Edible: Sky Prawn
(05/01/2008) Edibility update: dragonflies
Hi Daniel,
Happy May Day. Gorgeous photo of that swamp darner. Not so long ago dragonflies were a popular food in Indonesia, where they’re known as ’sky prawn.’ They’re eaten in both nymph and adult forms, but the former must be cooked because it may be a transitory host of a liver fluke. In old Japanese folklore dragonflies are the steeds of dead spirits.
Dave
www.slshrimp.com

Uninvited bug in tropical tank
Hi,
I was hoping you could help me with identifying this. I found it in my tropical freshwater fish tank the other day but not sure how it got there as it has been set up for 3-4 months and has a lid!! After looking through your site, the closest I could find is a Naiad but it doesn’t share some of the features. If it is a Naiad it’ll have a hard time getting out of the water let alone opening the lid of the tank, so I shall have to rescue it! What sort of time-frame is there for them turning into dragon-fly (if thats what it is)? Thanks for all the great work you guys do…
Laura Wells
(UK)

Hi Laura,
Yes, this is a Dragonfly Naiad. We are confused as to why you cannot remove the lid from your tank. Is it sealed? How do you feed the fish? This Dragonfly Naiad might have been very small and it might have arrived on the plants. We are also curious what it has been eating as they are carnivores.

Thank you for identifying it. Although I can remove the lid of the tank, I doubt a dragonfly can and there is no way for it to climb out of the water, so I shall rescue it this afternoon! It certainly hasn’t been eating my fish but I do feed the fish blood-worm once a week, pehaps this has been sustaining it? Thank you once again, we are all very grateful for your hard work…
Laura

Hi Laura,
Thanks for writing back and clearing up our confusion. We had visions of an hermetically sealed fish tank, fish and all, that was imported from China. The Blood Worms, aquatic midge larvae in the family Chironomidae, have probably been sustaining the Dragonfly Naiad. Additionally, the Dragonfly Naiad was probably introduced along with the living Blood Worms.

red saddlebag dragonfly? or maybe a kite-bug
Beautiful site. I looked through your dragonflies, this guy looks to me to be similar to the red saddlebags dragonfly picture. I thought to myself – but no, there aren’t any slow-moving rivers around here, but you know there is a canal a couple of miles east of here and we have had a lot of really strong winds from the east lately. Perhaps this one and his friend who didn’t make it into the picture were pushed over this way. On the chance that the kite aspect of this picture and the beautiful silhouetted wings make this a worthy picture, and because it might be a different kind of dragon fly, I’m sending it along. Thanks.
Paul

Hi Paul,
We are not sure if this is a Red Saddlebag Dragonfly, but it is definitely in that genus, Tramea. The photo really is quite beautiful.

Unknown Dragonfly
Found this little guy in a saline marsh on a little island off of south Louisiana. Had some trouble getting her in focus. Thanks,
David McWhorter
Field Biologist, Coastal Estuary Services, LLC.
Houma, LA

Hi David,
We are quite excited to have, we hope, properly identified your dragonfly. We believe this to be a female Gray-Waisted Skimmer, Cannaphila insularis, an apparent match to an image on BugGuide.

Correction: Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 10:54 AM
Good morning,
If I may, i’d rather think of a darkening female of Seaside Dragonlet (Erythrodiplax berenice), which is one of the only dragonfly species which larva can live in truly saline waters.
Third pics from bottom of this website
http://www.greglasley.net/seasidedrag.html
I hope it helps,
Renaud, Switzerland