Discovering Dragonflies on Friday, August 01, 2008

This year we have more dragonflies and damselflies than ever before. Watching nature inevitably leads to questions like: “What is that called? How does it reproduce? Why is it doing that?”

by Michele Dupraw

I have always noticed a few dragonflies flying over my garden, but the addition of a pond in my backyard has really increased their numbers and frequency.  On warm sunny days they can be found flying over the garden and lighting on stones and sticks around the pond.

I started photographing them, and trying to identify them, and I found that most of my insect books didn’t have very good photos or they had little information about them. I am always looking for an excuse to buy another field guide, so it wasn’t hard to justify another one. I thumbed through the Stokes Beginners Guide to Dragonflies and found that it had many of the species that I was seeing in my garden.  It is reasonably priced at $9.99.

After getting it home I was able to identify, with more certainty, many of the dragonflies I had photographed.  For example, the dragonfly in the first photo is a Northern Bluet, and shown below is a Pacific Forktail.  Donald and Lillian Stokes are the authors of many field guides and most well known for their field guide to birds. I especially appreciate the detail given to field marks that are distinctive to certain species of dragonflies. Not only do they give a detailed account of the species, but the text is highlighted with the key traits to look for. If you like this book, you should look for other books by the Stokes on bats, hummingbirds, and more.