The Queen Anne’s lace I had just removed from the ground was the proper diameter for my non-dominant left hand to pull it out gently with tap root intact. My right hand is too strong when I pull with it and often breaks the stem. A few of us were at the arboretum for the second straight summer removing the plant, plus some tansy ragwort, hoping that after this removal there will be very few the following year, since Queen Anne’s Lace is biennial.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash. I was still kneeling on the grassy meadow, but I put out a hand, rolled a little left and slowly got to my feet. It’s getting more difficult to do that.
Dragonfly. I spotted a dragonfly.
I watched it land, walked over towards it with my camera ready. It looked like it had spots similar to the 8 spotted skimmer I saw at Owen Rose Garden a week before, but then this particular insect took off. I followed it and watched it land again about 10 yards from my position.
Two weeks prior, Camilla, a close friend, had photographed a skimmer on a sidewalk. I hadn’t seen one before. Well not true. I likely had seen one, but I had not identified one before, and I identified this one for her. Skimmers have spots, and that particular one on the sidewalk had eight; hence, its name.
This dragonfly in the Queen Anne’s lace meadow had only four spots, more dark quadrilateral markings each on the medial or inner surface of each of the four wings. Each spot was perhaps a third the length of the wing. In addition, the outer or lateral part of the wing was definitely white. This was not an eight spotted skimmer (Libellula forensis) but rather a widow skimmer (Libellula luctuosa ), and the white spot made it a male. Just too cool. I had never sexed a single dragonfly before. I hadn’t even known they were sexually dimorphic.
I’ve been around these insects for all my life, but for the most part have left them alone and barely noticed them, although the summer in 1992 when I took a leave of absence to work in the Boundary Waters, I remembered a specific date, 3 June, on Disappointment Lake, when suddenly two things occurred: there were dragonflies everywhere and the daily mosquito population plummeted, although not extinguished.
Effect from cause.
Dragonflies are voracious feeders of insects and feed on other larvae in the nymph stage of their existence, too. These guys you want around. They are in the Order Odonata. They give their own order to the summer bug problem.
The widow skimmer took off again, flew around for half a minute, landing on grass, resisting my attempts to photograph it until my third attempt. The insects have 360 degree vision, so it’s difficult to sneak up on one. Their wings are something different from other wings as well: port forward/port aft/starboard forward/starboard aft. The spot on the leading edge of the wings is called a pterostigma and helps stabilize the rapidly fluttering wing. These guys weigh less than a gram and can fly nearly 55 km/h, or 34 mph.
Damselflies fold their wings.These dragonflies keep their wings down.
I wouldn’t have even noticed any of this had Camilla not sent the picture to me. At that point, well into my seventy-eighth year, I had no idea and no interest in the insect. But I looked it up, the spots making for an easy identification, and once I had that, when I saw another skimmer flying around, my curiosity was primed, and I stopped digging and started to see where it landed. And if there is another time in the future where I am out and about and see a dragonfly, it is a sure thing that I will be following it, see where it lands and try to get an identification.
Three or so arboretum work parties later, I noted dark patches of dirt in the same meadow. I asked Patrick, who works there, what they were. He told me when the dirt is pushed out in a semicircle it is a gopher. If there is a central hole with a small volcano shaped pile of dirt, the digger is a mole.
Neil deGrasse Tyson says he tries every day to learn something new and to be nice to a person. I like that philosophy which pushes me to be curious, which I am and like to learn new things, and to be nice to those around me.
Boreal B[l]og 