Oh dragonfly. Won’t you pause and rest for a moment, perch on the tip of a stem to bask and warm your wings in the bright springtime sun? I can’t get a good shot when you zip and zig about. Are you busier in the spring, finding mates and snapping up smaller insects to sate your winter hunger?
But there--you two! You're not moving too fast...and you've alighted on a partially-submerged reed. Shining eyes and sparkling wings above the greenish-brown muck of still pond water.
Fore and aft: blue abdomen locked behind the head of red abdomen, and red abdomen dipped under the surface. So not in the act, but the aftermath: the red-abdomened female laying eggs in plant material near the surface, as her blue-abdomened suitor guards against other males who may attempt to mate with her as well. The endmost segments of his abdomen have specialized pincers to grasp his mate at
Earlier, when mating, the male would be in the same position but the female would have curled her abdomen so the tip was in contact with the base of the male's abdomen, where she could collect the waiting sperm, an awkward-looking position known as a "mating wheel" common to dragonflies and damselflies.
The obliging models are Common Green Darners (Anax junius), large dragonflies found throughout most of the country. The species has populations that overwinter in the north, and other populations that migrate to the south as the summer winds down. The dragonflies that don't migrate will overwinter underwater as nymphs (or naiads, as the nymphs of aquatic insects are called), emerging the next spring and shedding their last nymphal exoskeleton to become a winged adult dragonfly.
Sources/Additional Reading:
- https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Anax_junius/
- https://www.colorado.edu/asmagazine-archive/node/1848
- Dragonflies Embark on an Epic, Multi-Generational Migration Each Year
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