Lyre-tipped Spreadwing

The morning was an epoch of thunderstorms, downpours, and rainlight. The afternoon, with high humidity and heat, was molten.

I took a short, ambling walk at the St Olaf Natural Lands to look for Ruby Meadowhawks and found none. Perhaps it is still too early in the season for the dragonflies to show up along the prairie trails? Perhaps the morning weather drove them to shelter? Perhaps the unstoppable foraging of muskrats in the pothole breeding site, creating a sudden amount of open water, has altered the conditions for the nymphs? Perhaps it's just a down year for meadowhawks in general? These questions / worries surfaced as I searched for dragonflies and didn't find them.

As always there were other things to admire along the way. Lots of Leopard Frogs. And lots of Lyre-tipped Spreadwings. The latter is a very common late-summer damselfly here. The paraprocts of the male, the bottom two appendages at the end of the abdomen, are curved and resemble the shape of an Ancient Greek lyre. You'd probably need a pair of eyes with superhero vision to see this character in the field unaided, but it's readily visible using close-focusing binoculars or with the magnification of a good macro lens on a camera.

Posted on July 26, 2017 01:28 AM by scottking