The blue-eyed darner dragonfly in Nanaimo, BC.


OK, so you'll notice that the "blue-eyed" doesn't apply to this particular individual.  That's because she is female; only the male is equipped with the ""baby blues."  Both sexes, however, are one of the first dragonflies to emerge in spring.  I photographed this in June (2014) while visiting Nanaimo on Vancouver Island.  They are common west of the Rockies in much of North America.

Identifying insects is something I enjoy doing although I must admit it is not always easy or even possible for that matter.  For example, I had to search a number of sites before discovering this particular species.  One site I often go to is insectidentification.org.  If you click on the link you will find a site loaded with various ways to figure out what the unbeknownst species is.  In this case, the search came up empty because it turns out that it is not listed as being in British Columbia and that the primary colour is not orange or even brown.  By changing it to blue (male) and selecting "Washington" I finally found the insect, only after I discovered its identity on another site.  You can see what the problem is.

There are a few other sites that I frequent.  One is e-fauna bc.  After selecting "Invertebrates of BC: Insects" I typed "dragonfly" into the query field and ended up with 89 possible species.  That's just in BC.  In the US and Canada there are about 5,500 species of the insect.  I am sure the 89 listed was not totally exhaustive.  I did find the dragonfly on this list though; the thumbnail presented was not much help.  I had to search for "eyed" in the field to find the species.  Again, this was after I determined what it was elsewhere.

I have a dozen books on insects, access to the internet (when not camping away from civilization), and enough knowledge and determination to often be successful, but the truth is that it may not be enough.  Thankfully, the resources available today are vastly different from the way it was 10, 20, or 30 years ago.  This is one of the reasons species often have multiple latin names attributed to them.  It was originally discovered as a species in 1861 but has had several name changes and taxonomic shuffles as late as 2005.  

Well, I can say for certain that I took a photo of a dragonfly.  I think.  Maybe.

Thanks for reading.   www.ericspix.com



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