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Blue dasher dragonfly

While photographing button bush blooms this dragonfly landed on the tip of a twig and rested in the sunshine for an extended period of time. It was quite obliging allowing me to change my position to photograph it from several angles. I'm no expert on the different species however with a bit of research I believe this is either a female or immature male blue dasher.

While researching I learned more about dragonflies than what grandmother told me as a child. She said they sewed up children's eyes and to run whenever you see one. Gran would have been a great children's fable writer to scare the knickers off little ones.

Anyways I learned how beneficial they actually are. The foremost benefit is they eat insects most of which are mosquitoes and flies and can eat up to 300 insects per day. Their accuracy for getting their prey is about 97% not bad considering they are doing that on the fly.

There is a downside to the world of dragonflies and that is they not only attack prey but they are prey as well. Birds,frogs,snakes will take a dragonfly as their nourishment and that’s the circle of life.

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Uploaded on June 24, 2022