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,…
Tag: Odonata
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…