The Dragons of Summer

"Saw a couple of them near the foot of the hill today," said one of the neighbors early this summer. A few days later, another neighbor called around with an update: "They're up as far as the bend in the road," he said. "Shouldn't be long now." Days later, the good news finally came: "They're here. Had a half a dozen dragonflies cruising the parking lot when I got home this evening."

Someone overhearing the neighborhood residents might think we're awaiting a liberating army rather than some oversized flying insects, but in a way, those insects are liberators. Once the dragonfly fleets make their way uphill, the local mosquito population falls dramatically.

Where I grew up, big dragonflies were called "mosquito hawks" for very good reason. Dragonflies and their cousins, the generally smaller but similar damselflies, catch and consume quantities of flying pests. (The easiest way to tell the cousins apart is to watch them at rest. Dragonflies sit with their wings spread out horizontally. Damselflies fold their wings, so that they project together up and back from the insect's body.)

Of course, in that part of the country, people also referred to damselflies as "darning needles" and claimed they would sew up the lips of over-talkative children. The name probably came from the insect's general shape and darting behavior, and the claimed (and totally fictitious) behavior from frustration with chatterbox children.

Because my knowledge of dragonflies and their kin might be contaminated by such fictions learned in childhood, I checked out some facts before writing this. The highly readable and informative book The Nature of Southeast Alaska has a brief discussion of dragonfly natural history, so I used it to verify my memory.

A book about Southeastern's natural attributes was a likely source of information on dragonflies and their kin because, for most of their lives, they are truly aquatic insects. The watery realm of southeastern Alaska provides some wonderful habitat for these creatures. (There's even a species of damselfly with an appropriately Alaskan popular name---the Sitka darner.)

Larval dragonflies are the water-dwelling form. They are known as nymphs or naiads, terms that in classical mythology are associated with beautiful sprites. Not even a mother dragonfly could find these leggy, lumpy eating machines beautiful. Larval dragonflies are not pretty and they are deadly hunters. Their massive lower jaws spring forward, impaling other aquatic insect larvae or even small fish, then snap back to bring the captured prey in for devouring.

These scourges of the ponds live as larvae for up to four years. The flying adults have only a bit over a month of life in the open air. Although more handsome, they also are deadly hunting machines. Unlike other families of flying insects, dragonflies and damselflies can maneuver each of their four wings independently. This ability gives them their helicopter-like capabilities for hovering, changing direction, and flying backward. Big dragonflies can speed along at 60 miles per hour, and their helmetlike eyes---each with some 30,000 separate facets---give them a wide field of vision. They prefer to hunt by day, but can see very well in darkness. Dragonflies also have unusually movable necks, so they can turn their heads to locate prey even while they fly.

Not only are these big insects superbly equipped to find and outfly potential prey, they have design features making it easy to catch dinner on the wing. Their long legs are set well forward under their bodies, and the front legs are bedecked with a number of spines. Folded forward and cupped together, the dragonfly's legs make a kind of catcher basket to snare airborne prey or to snatch a victim off a leaf.

All in all, mosquitoes don't stand a chance against dragonflies---and that's fine by me!