Atlantic Bluet

Meet the Atlantic Bluet (either an immature male or a female, alas, the end of its abdomen is not quite in focus enough for my inexperienced eyeballs to tell), a narrow-winged damselfly found in the Caribbean and North America. Males are a beautiful bright blue, which may be related to the name “bluet”. This genus,…

Blue-ringed Dancer Damselfly

Damselflies are the bane of my existence as a photographer — adorable, striking, expressive, and damn near impossible to identify in the field. They are either identified based on some tiny part which was just out of focus or just out of shot, or they start life as one color and turn other colors as…

Fragile Forktail

As a macro photographer, whose gear requires that I get pretty personal with my subjects, I generally have a lot of problems with fast-moving, flighty damselflies. I can’t blame them for not wanting something the approximate same size as a semi truck to get within two inches of them, but it makes photos like this…

Blue Dasher Dragonfly

Whoever named the blue dasher dragonfly (Pachydiplax longipennis) clearly hadn’t seen a female; this female has almost no blue on her whatever. The males, of course, have bright blue abdomens, a green striped thorax, and green eyes. Blue dashers are “perching” dragonflies; they regulate their body temperature by basking in the sun. If they really…

Hentz Orb Weaver Eating a Dragonfly

This is quite possibly the most “nature is metal” photo I’ve ever taken. This Hentz orb weaver spider (Neoscona crucifera), about 2″ radius max, has taken down a fully grown great blue skipper dragonfly (Libuella vibrans), which is about 3 1/2″ inches long. Imagine the rodeo that must have been!

Halloween Pennant Dragonfly

I love these dragonflies, because they are so easy to identify — they are the only dragonfly in Florida with those multiple big, brown spots all over their wings. Also, who doesn’t love Halloween?!? Celithemis eponina lives all over the eastern United States, mostly near bodies of water. They mostly appear in the summer in…