Posted By auntie on November 21, 2014

so remember this guy from wednesday’s hike?

common green darner

i asked my friend bruce fellman about him. bruce is a naturalist who has a particular passion for dragonflies. here is what he told me:

“…it’s a Common Green Darner (Anax junius) and one of our most abundant large odonates, particularly in the late summer/early fall, when they form enormous feeding swarms just before they head out, en masse, on a one-way-trip south in a migration similar to that undertaken by the Monarch butterfly. In fact, if you get down to Napatree in September and October, you can sometimes see butterflies and dragonflies traveling down the beach together. No one really knows exactly where the Common Greens go, but the best guess is at least to the mid-Atlantic states, where they lay their eggs and, later, die; it’s the kids who’ll be coming back to our area, starting in mid-to-late May. There’s also local breeding here, too, but the earliest Common Greens are always individuals who were born in more southern areas and flew up here.

“The one you found is probably one of the last of the year, and a surprise to me, since I haven’t seen a Common Green in our area since the beginning of the month. I had figured they had called it a year. This one, alas, overstayed his welcome and called it a lifetime.”

i love that i know somebody who can answer these kinds of inquiries! thanks bruce!

by the way, if you’re not following bruce’s blog, you should be. he’s a fantastic photographer and a fascinating writer about the natural world.

Categories: Misc Stuff, Rhode Island, Walks and Hikes
Tags: Insects