There have been swarms of dragonflies along the Lake Michigan shoreline in recent weeks. Not only do dragonflies gravitate to our great lake, they depend on local ponds and streams too.
To learn more, I meet naturalist and photographer Kate Redmond at another dragonfly habitat — the Riveredge Nature Center in northwest of Milwaukee.
As she guides me toward one of the ponds tucked within nature center property, Redmond says she’s been enthralled with nature and “all its pieces” her entire life. She still has a box of color slides of insects she photographed back in the 1970s when she got her first decent camera.
Today Redmond’s powerful lens stands poised. “There’s a dragonfly out there beyond the white lily flower,” she says.
Redmond creates a Bug of the Week post you can find here.
WUWM
Redmond starts watching for dragonflies in late April. “The first dragonflies we see every year are Common Green Darners that have migrated up from the southeast,” she says some wing up from as far away as the Gulf Coast.
The migrating darners mate and lay their eggs and then they die.
Wisconsin also has its own resident population of the species. “They’re the ones who are around through the summertime and about the time they have mated, laid their eggs and died then the offspring of the migratory guys are emerging. So that’s why we see this huge number of Common Green Darners at the end of August, at the very beginning of September,” Redmond explains.
And that’s just one of a multitude of dragonfly species and their relatives, the damselflies. “In North America, there are 325 species of dragonflies and 135 species of damselflies,” Redmond says.
Damselflies have slimmer bodies than the heftier, bulkier dragonfly. When damselflies perch, they discretely fold their wings back over their tummies. On the other hand, most dragonflies' wings are straight out to the side when perched, Redmond shares.
Damsels and dragonflies can live about a year — from egg to adult. "They spend most of their time, nine-tenths, in the water,” she adds.
Redmond marvels at their dramatic and beautiful transformation from the naiad, or nymph, stage to adult. “When they come out of the water, they take a deep breath and split the skin on the final skin they crawl out of,” Redmond ays.
Depending on the species, the process can take 45 minutes. Then their adult colors start emerging. Take the Autumn Meadowhawk, a dragonfly species. "Males are dark red and females are orangey yellow," she shares.
Redmond points to richly-colored creature right in front of us - a Blue Dasher perched on a lily leaf. “He’s the peacock of the dragonfly world. He’s beautiful. You see sort of a sapphire color. He’s a mixture of blue and green,” she says.
Some dragonflies and damsels gravitate to flowing streams, while others depend on ponds.
Flying insects like dragons and damsels are critical to the ecosystem.
“Typically, at this time of year, we have this giant outbreak of these floodwater mosquitoes and one of the favorite things that dragonflies like to eat is mosquitoes and they snatch them out of the air. … Yeah, they control insects and some of the insects that they eat are insects that we don’t want to have around,” Redmond ays.
As for the dragonflies we’re seeing along Lake Michigan shore? Redmond says they’re likely the first batch — mostly a newly-emerged generation of Common Green Darners migrating back to the southeast.
Soon they’ll be joined by hawks that follow the same migratory path and feed on the dragonflies.
“And they’ll grab them out of the air with their fist and they can eat ‘em while they’re in flight. This has been happening for thousands of years,” Redmond says.
It’s part of the lifecycle of nature that surrounds us every day.
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