American Bluet
The girls caught this blue-and-black damselfly for me on July 3, 2017. Normally, damselflies are flighty little things and hard to photograph, but this one hung around for a few shots, at least.
Judging from the lack of anything resembling claspers at the abdomen tip, I think this was probably a female (although I could be mistaken on that point).
She has an interesting blue “spectacle” mark running across the eyes and the top of her head.
This looks like one of the American Bluets in the genus Enallagma. There are at least thirty-five species in this genus, most of which are blue, and about a quarter look like they have that blue spectacle-mark on the head. The males can often be distinguished to species based on their claspers and their often-brighter colors, but the females not so much.
Anyway, like their larger relatives the dragonflies, damselflies are aerial predators. Being small, they probably prefer smaller prey, snatching up things like mosquitoes and midges. Their nymphs are aquatic, and in general when we find a body of water that contains damselfly nymphs, what we do not see is mosquito larvae. Which makes me think that their nymphs are absolute murder on mosquitoes. Yay!
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Those “spectacles” are right out of The Far Side!
Because of their size and movement, the lovely patterns on the damselflies are often missed
Yes. One would think that the bright colors would make them easier to spot, but they are so thin that they are easy to miss, particularly if light is reflecting off the water.