The weekend before last I wrote on my “1001 Species” newsletter about Dragonflies. This is one of the three species I mentioned but he put on a particularly good show for me so here he is again. In the garden amongst the native plants we look after there are some canes providing support and this fellow was using one as a hunting platform, rather like the various flycatcher bird species do. He would sally out and catch something edible on the wing - mostly mosquitoes I think - before returning again and again to his hunting post.
This is a male on which each wing has three brown spots - four wings, three spots, each twelve spots in total. The female has yellow stripes down the abdomen with faded white marks on the wings. A reasonably common species (Libellula pulchella) on this continent. Usually found near water. Females lay eggs in ponds, lakes, or slow-moving streams and rivers where they hatch into naiads which look more like crustaceans than dragonflies and spend this early stage underwater. After feeding and growing, naiads eventually crawl out of the water and molt into winged adults.
They eat almost any flying insect including mosquitoes, flies, butterflies, moths, mayflies, and flying ants or termites. During their larval stage, naiads feed on a wide variety of aquatic insects, such as mosquito larvae, other aquatic fly larvae, mayfly larvae, and freshwater shrimp. They can also eat small fish and tadpoles.
I think we have quite a few of these in western Oregon.
What a beautiful dragonfly!