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“Any luck today?”
“A little. Saw a mating pair of Gray Sanddragons
back at the last bend.”
“Cool! That’d be a lifer for me. Where, exactly,
did you see them?”
“Just go back about fifty yards, and look on the
sand at the outside of the bend, right below where that
Comanche Skimmer’s been perching. There’re some Painted
Damsels in the grass there too.”
“Oh wow!
I’ve always wanted to see those!”
This little scenario is fictional, of course, but
before too long I expect it to be playing out in Arizona and
all over North America as birders and butterflyers begin to
pay more attention to dragonflies and damselflies. We’ve all
seen dragonflies: big, robust insects plying the air above our
favorite birding ponds and lakes, or patrolling beats up and
down the rivers and streams which we also patrol in search of
birds. On the days when the birds aren’t being too coöperative,
some of us have improved the time spent waiting for them to
appear by watching the antics of dragonflies, though it would
be a mistake to consider these fascinating insects as
“default” subjects, suitable for study only until our real
targets finally make their
entrance.
Dragons obviously come in different flavors. They
wear all the colors of the rainbow, from the most brilliant
scarlet to the drabbest grays and browns; some are boldly,
even strikingly, patterned, while others are more uniform.
Arizona dragonflies vary widely in size, from the little
Plateau Dragonlet (about 35mm [1.4 "] long) to the Giant
Darner, which can exceed 110mm [4.3"]. Their shapes
differ too, from stocky and compact to long and slender, and
some have their tails expanded into obvious “clubs.” Some
regularly perch, others seem to be constantly on the wing.
Some we see only along streams, others only at ponds, and a
few kinds might be almost anywhere.
Fewer of us may have noticed the dragons’ close
relatives, the damselflies, because they’re usually smaller
(most Arizona species are less than 40mm [1.6"] long),
much more slender, and
generally inconspicuous. Dragons and damsels are closely
related to each other and both groups belong to the Order
Odonata, also known as “odonates,” or “odes” for
short; but they differ sufficiently that they fall into
separate suborders: Anisoptera for the dragons, Zygoptera for
the damsels. Adult dragons are bigger, sturdier insects with
powerful flight; when perched, they hold their wings
horizontally out to the sides and resemble little airplanes.
The damsels are slender, and their flight is weak in
comparison to their big relatives; at rest, they usually hold
their wings back-to-back just above and parallel to their
abdomens, though the spreadwings (Lestidae) often perch with
their wings spread out horizontally and resemble dragonflies.
Adults differ in other ways, but this is enough information to
assign any unfamiliar ode to its proper suborder.
If there are different species, then we ought to be
able to identify them, and thereby gain access to the
attendant literature where we can learn more about them; but
now we hit a snag: what do we use for a field guide? As
birders, we’re all accustomed to the field guide concept;
after all, field guides to North American birds have been
around since the 1930’s, and it’s a rare birder indeed who
didn’t start his or her birding life with a Peterson or some
such in a daypack, or shoved into a back pocket, readily
available for on-the-spot reference. Most of us know that no
field guide is perfect, so we own several in order to
facilitate cross-checking; and we spend countless hours
debating their relative merits. Prospective dragonflyers
don’t have this luxury. Even the redoubtable Peterson Field
Guide series, the very series that introduced the term
“field guide” to our lexicon and which now runs to over
fifty volumes covering nearly every aspect of the natural
world, fails to include a guide to the Odonata. We haven’t
had even one field guide to choose from.
In late 2000 Sidney W. Dunkle partially filled this
void with the publication of his Dragonflies Through
Binoculars. Birders may not be too familiar with the
...Through Binoculars series of field guides,
but the butterflyers among us will know them well. These
guides are illustrated with excellent photographs of virtually
all the species they cover, but unlike most photographically
illustrated bird guides they also include useful textual
information. Sid took the lion’s share of photographs for Dragonflies
Through Binoculars himself; but a quick scan of
the photo credits discloses the names of several other
excellent bugshooters, some of whom are also known as fine
birdshooters: Bob Behrstock, Blair Nikula and Dennis Paulson,
to mention a few. The book covers the 307 species of
dragonflies known to occur in North America, but doesn’t
include the 165 or so of damselflies. Sid tells me that a
companion guide to damsels is in the works, but it may be a
while before it finally reaches the shelves of your favorite
bookstore.
More recently, this year in fact, Blair Nikula and
Jacqueline Sones brought out A Beginner’s Guide
to Dragonflies, a Stokes guide to the basics of
North American dragonfly and damselfly identification.
This volume
California Dancer by
Pete Moulton
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covers about 100 of the most common, widespread
and distinctive North American species, and illustrates them
mainly with Nikula’s superb photographs, though the work of
some other fine bugshooters is in there too. You won’t find
all of Arizona’s 61 dragons and 52 damsels in this book, but
you will learn the characteristics of the seven Families of
North American dragons (five of which are known to occur in
Arizona) and the five Families of North American damsels (four
in Arizona). It’s an excellent way to get started.
Both books employ the English names proposed by the
Nomenclature Committee of the Dragonfly Society of the
Americas, as well as the scientific binomials. This will be a
comfort to the amateur naturalist who may find it easier to
pronounce “Arizona Snaketail” than it would be to wrap the
lips around “Ophiogomphus
arizonicus.” I’m fully aware of the value of
scientific names, but certainly won’t deny that some of them
can be real jawbreakers.
While both books are strongly oriented toward field
identification, both plainly state that some species groups
still require in-hand methods. This is probably more true with
the damselflies, partly because they’re smaller and far less
conspicuous than the dragons, partly because no real field
guide is available for them yet, and partly because some
groups, such as the blue Argia
damsels, contain very similar species. Birders who have faced
silent Empidonax
flycatchers on migration, which is to say all of us, will
understand this problem. On the other hand, most of the
dragons and many of the damsels can be identified by the same
methods we use on birds. There are some anatomical and
physiological differences, of course, but those are easily
dealt with.
Now we can go birding for dragonflies, and it’s not
too awfully different from birding for birds. The first step,
naturally, is to find some odes to observe. This isn’t
difficult. For the most part, they’ll be near surface water,
precisely in the same places where we spend the majority of
our birding time. Certain species prefer various types of
streams, others favor still waters, and a few might be near
any kind of water; some-the Wandering Glider and Variegated
Meadowhawk, to name two Arizona species-may occasionally be
well out in the desert, miles from the nearest water. Water is
the key factor for odes because they lay their eggs in it and
their larvae are all subaquatic, emerging into the air only
when they’re ready to undergo their final molt into the
adult form.
Arizona’s roster of odonates includes widespread
and common species, local species, western specialties,
eastern species at their western range limits, northern
species at their southern limits, desert-adapted specialties,
neotropical species at their northern limits, and a few
strays. Many of our species live only in strictly
circumscribed habitats, and can be scarce even in their
favored haunts. Some odes fly throughout the year, while
others have more limited periods of emergence; a few migrate
on a regular basis. None of this will seem strange to an
Arizona birder. Most odonates are sexually dimorphic; that is,
the males and females look different, and in at least one
species of damselfly, the Rambur’s Forktail, the females
occur in four wildly different color morphs.
Dragonflying is similar to birding and butterflying
in other ways. Amateur odonatists can contribute to
biogeographical knowledge, especially in Arizona, where the
distributions of many odes are only poorly known. Plenty of
birders and butterflyers, and not a few amateur herpetologists
and botanists, live in or visit our state, but hardly anyone
has studied Arizona’s odonates. True, some odonatists, such
as Blair Nikula and Stu Tingley, have visited Arizona for the
express purpose of photographing our specialty odes; but
they’ve usually maintained low profiles, passing themselves
off as birders perhaps, and then published their photos
elsewhere. We all know that amateur naturalists can provide
useful data on plant and animal distributions and populations,
and in fact that’s why many of us do what we do. Now’s the
time for amateur odonatists to step up and add their own data.
The more conservation-oriented observers can study
the changing populations of odes as an indirect indication of
water quality. Listers will keep state and life lists, and
begin to make trips to Florida, Texas and New England hoping
to find new species for their lists. Some will make
pilgrimages to Chicago, seeking out the federally endangered
Hine’s Emerald, or possibly to Gainesville for Say’s
Spiketail, exactly as we birders trek to Grayling to see
Kirtland’s Warbler. Ode “hotlines” and computer
chatlines already exist in New England, Iowa and some other
regions, and we can expect more to emerge as interest and
awareness increase. Some subscribers to the Arizona-New Mexico
bird-sighting listserv have begun posting ode observations
right along with their bird reports. And why not? Dragonflying
is a lot like birding, after all.
Comanche Skimmer by Pete Moulton
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