MY FAVORITE DRAGONFLIES

     Visibly active during summer months, white-tailed and twelve-spotted skimmers are common, related species of dragonflies living in southeastern Pennsylvania, and much of the United States.  These kinds of dragonflies have characteristics in common, which demonstrates their shared ancestry.  And they are my favorite dragonflies.   They are large enough to be easily seen in rapid flight, have attractive color patterns and are excitedly fast when sweeping low over cattail-bordered ponds, grass-lined, slow-moving creeks and bordering farmland after flying insects, including lots of mosquitoes, which they catch and eat.  And, interestingly, they hover like helicopters.  Dragonflies are thrilling, entertaining and inspiring to watch, without fear of being stung or bitten by them.  Their beauties and dashing flamboyance help make summer waters come to life.

     Both these kinds of skimmers are two inches long and have three inch wing spans, making them quite visible in flight.  They are built for swift flight, with four broad wings and powerful flight muscles.  Females of both species spawn eggs by repeatedly dipping the tips of their abdomens in the warm, still shallows of ponds and slow parts of creeks.  

     The one-inch, brown young, or naiads, of these skimmers live on the muddy or stony bottoms of ponds and sluggish waterways where those naiads are camouflaged, which makes them nearly invisible to  predatory fish, frogs, turtles, herons and other predators.  And on those bottoms, naiads capture and consume aquatic invertebrates smaller than themselves.  Like all creatures, they are part of several food chains of who is eating whom.

     When naiads mature, they crawl up aquatic vegetation, into the air, squeeze out of their larval exoskeletons and fly away on their four, newly-formed wings.  Soon these new dragonflies are zipping low over water and land to seize flying insects in mid-air, mating, and laying eggs back in the warm shallows of still or slow waters, where they hatched and grew.

     White-tailed and twelve-spotted skimmers also have traits unique to themselves, which identifies them as different, but related, species.  White-tailed males have prominent, white abdomens, that are quite visible, and readily identify them.  Female white-tails are pretty in their own, plainer, way.  They have brown abdomens, with a white spot on both sides of each segment of abdomen.

     Male twelve-spots have three prominent, brown spots on each of four wings, and two, noticeable white casts between the brown spots on each wing, which makes those wings really stand out.  Female twelve-spots have three brown spots on each wing, but don't have the white casts on their wings that males do.  But female twelve-spots have a yellow bar on both sides of each segment of their brown abdomens.  

     The attractive white-tailed and twelve-spotted skimmers are my favorite kinds of dragonflies, which are visible only in summer around ponds and creeks.  Their dashing flight after flying insects is exciting and entertaining.  And all dragonflies are not harmful to people.  In fact, they ae beneficial to us because of all the mosquitoes and other pesky insects they ingest.        

  

     

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