As I was eating breakfast one morning I noticed unusual movement in the pond. When I looked closer, it turned out to be a dragonfly thrashing around in the water near a waterlily leaf. At times it had its front legs on the leaf and its behavior appeared to be as if it was trying to climb out of the water.
I’ve often seen dragonflies fly close to the pond surface, sometimes taking a brief dip as they pass over it (reasons for that include egg-laying or cooling). However, I’d never seen immersion (of the adult form) or this thrashing behavior before and I wasn’t sure what to do. Eventually I decided that I would scoop it out and leave it near the pond in case it wanted to go back to whatever it was doing.
Once it was out of the water, it vibrated its wings and wiped its face with its front legs (video below).
I took advantage of the rare opportunity to take close photographs, which allowed me to identify it as a female Common Green Darner (Anax junius). For scale, the side of the net is 4 inches long, which would make the body length about 3 inches and the wing span over 4 inches. This is a large dragonfly.
It is only recently that I learned that some dragonflies migrate, and this is one species that does. The timing of my observation (October) suggests that this Darner is part of the population that has migrated from the northern United States with a final destination in Texas or Mexico. If so, perhaps it is not surprising that the wings seem tattered. That’s an impressive journey for such a little creature.
After a minute or two of resting, while I had my back turned, it disappeared but did not return to the pond.
So maybe I did rescue it from drowning. I’ll never know.
I wonder if the fact that the waterlilies are particularly dense right now is making it more difficult for dragonflies to aim for areas of open water.
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