Weekly Photo Challenge: Summer (Azure Bluets #1)

“Azure Bluets #1” (Damselflies) Paintography – Copyright Anne M. Freeman

What images remind me of summer?   The lovely Azure Bluet is one.  How can a creature with the name Azure Bluet be anything but beautiful?  Hovering delicately at a pond’s edge, almost motionless, one darts off to capture a mosquito that was only recently bothering me as I sat at the pond’s grassy bank to watch for damselflies.  Thank you!

There are many different damselflies, often with fluorescent coloring in blues, greens, reds and purples.  Summer brings out these lovely insects, along with their more hefty cousins, the dragonflies.  They are all voracious predators, despite their beautiful colors and delicate forms.  An easy way to distinguish between damselflies and dragon flies is how they hold their wings when resting:  Damselflies hold their wings alongside their long abdomens, as the azure bluets are doing in the photo above.  Dragonflies hold their wings away from their bodies, and look like miniature airplanes.

Damselflies are members of the insect family Coenagrionidae, also known as “narrow-winged damselflies” or “pond damselflies.”  They prefer ponds and slowly moving water where there is plenty of vegetation to rest and hide and lay their eggs.  They capture their prey, which is any flying insect that is not bigger than them,  on the wing.

Damselflies and dragonflies are similar to butterflies in that they undergo a metamorphosis, from underwater nymph to an airborne insect.  Some species’ nymph stage can last up to a year.  But in the air, they are creatures of the sun, dying when the cold weather arrives.

But enough of facts.  Back to beauty, and summer.  And damselflies, hovering, darting, resting, posing.  Waiting for me to admire their flashy displays.   Click, click, click …

~Anne

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Tags: Anne Freeman Images, Biology, Coenagrionidae, Damselfly, Dragonfly, Flora and Fauna, Insect, Odonata, Paintography, photo of the week, postaweek2012

• 06/01/2012
• Dragonflies, Insects, Paintography, Photo of the Week, Ponds, PostAWeek, Seasonal, Spring, Summer
• 13 Comments