Flashes of blue and green light

A few more Odonata from Reifel Island.

(We were there in mid-afternoon, on a baking hot day. It's not a good time for birding, but it sure was for bugs of all types!)

Male bluet. There must have been hundreds of these. Every photo taken over the water had many tiny flashes of blue, as they zipped back and forth, rarely stopping.

A female of the same species, not nearly as gaudy as her mate.

Skimmer, possibly the four-spotted skimmer, pausing briefly on dried grass.

And a sad story. There were many very small damselflies along the edge of the water, too small and too fast to get a good look at them. I got the impression of colourless wings vibrating at great speed, and not much else, until one landed right in front of me.

Unfortunately, the chosen landing spot was booby-trapped, and within seconds, a spider dropped down and sunk her fangs into the damselfly. It struggled wildly, twisting and shaking, only entangling itself even more. And the one half-decent photo I got shows more of the spider than of the fly.

The spider is another of the cross spiders. Very happy, not cross at all.

The damselfly has a black back, greenish-yellow underside, green and yellow eyes and legs. The wings are distinctive; just a cheese-cloth weave with a tiny brownish diamond near the tip. I have submitted it to BugGuide, without much hope of an identification, but you never know; those people are geniuses!

Winged heart

At the edge of a tiny puddle of a lake, the dragonflies and bluets were dancing. This pair of bluets flew over to where I was looking for frogs (Plop! Plop!) and perched right in front of me.

The blue male was doing the steering; he already had the female firmly held by the back of her neck with the graspers at the end of his abdomen. She came along like a trailer on a hitch.

Landing. She's still trying to fly.

She rests, hanging loose.

He gets himself well anchored ...

... and pulls her back to his level.

She curls her abdomen forward.

He has already pre-loaded the sperm bank on the bottom of his thorax, from the genital organ at the tip of his abdomen. Now she has to get her own genital opening into position.

Almost there.

Contact! And they make a two-tone heart together.

I shifted position, getting a firmer foothold, and the winged heart flew away. She will lay her eggs now in a plant underwater. He will hold on, staying dry himself, keeping her safe, until she is done.

(And another heart for Clytie.)