Welcome to my first post of Dragonfly & Damselfly photographs taken mostly around Quebec, a few are from Ontario and still a few more from further afield.
Hardened Odonata enthusiasts tend to blind the casual interest with science. Scientific names, talk of identifying species by their reproductive organs, adding the original describer of the species to their names, some never even refer to the popular, and for the sake of this blog, English names. That is fine but, if you just want to enjoy them, identify them, get to know them by sight it can seem over complicated.
I intend to blog for each species I photograph. For now I have around 45 species to upload, I expect to add to this with each season and I'll update species already present when new photographs are taken. I'm also going to try to give some idea where local people (that is local to Montreal) can see things within the species accounts.
If you visit the blog and find errors (quite likely) please let me know at DennisM@videotron.ca
Now back to the insects.
Dragonflies spend most of their lives as larvae devouring things smaller than themselves in the water, then they climb out and become, in most cases, inspirational.
Below a typical scene of a dragonfly over water, species possibly Green Darner, thanks Chris.
These ugly crusts are called Naiads and are the bodies of the aquatic stage of the dragonflies life They climb up a stem and climb out of their bodies. They do this so they can breed. The flying adults are voracious eating and breeding machines and have been for millions of years. If dragonflies were the size of Canada Geese they would probably take prey as large as a rabbit, any bigger and small children and the vertically challenged would need to beware.
When they breed, some species form a cartwheel (page 69 in the Karma Sutra). The male fertilises the eggs, the female lays them, they never speak of this meeting again. In some other species the male clamps the female just behind the neck and then either dunks the female into the water or holds her under, its only a matter of time before the first feminist dragonfly evolves, and quite right too.
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