(All photos taken by @paradigm42)
My mind is still stuck in summer time.. Winter just makes me want to be a hermit lol.. This evening in order to keep away the winter blues, I present to you a taste of summer in the form of this rather epic Orange Meadowhawk Dragonfly! I found this one hanging around at the very end of summer, in early September.
These guys generally tend to hang around lakes, ponds, and streams, but can also be found in fields and meadows near by any of the mentioned water sources. I this one in a meadow like area about a five minute walk away from a stream in a pretty rural area.
As a naiad (first stage as a juvenile), they are completely aquatic. They live submerged in water eating tiny crustaceans and insects until they molt and come out of the water, eventually molting again becoming a fully flying adult.
As adults the Orange Meadowhawk Dragonfly hunts small insects such as flies, ants, moths, mayflies, and also thankfully the dreaded mosquito (Anything that eats mosquitos is a friend of mine!).
I am always happy to see Dragonflies and not just because thay awesome and cool looking. Seeing large populations of Dragonflies in an area can help to indicate a heathy and clean water body as their naiads do not do well in an polluted or compromised ecosystem.
I hope you have enjoyed this little journey back to summer to visit and learn about the Orange Meadowhawk Dragonfly. As always, please remember that it is all about the little things in life, and thanks for looking in!
(Photos taken with a LG Thin q8 12mp camera, with a Xenvo 15x macro lens.)
Insect classification info was found here:
https://www.insectidentification.org/insect-description.php?identification=Orange-Meadowhawk-Skimmer