Top Photo: Male blue corporal.

As mentioned previously on this blog (April) blue corporals are early season dragonflies.

They’ve usually come and gone by the time the “big” six species of dragonflies begin to make themselves seen. That is, the six species of skimmers (Libellulidae) that you might find at just about any body of water in the state, certainly any pond or lake throughout the warm spring, summer, and fall seasons. Those six species are:

Blue dasher

Great blue skimmer

Slaty skimmer

Eastern amberwing

Eastern pondhawk

Common whitetail

I’ve only seen one of the big six so far this season, common whitetail, patrolling and perching out over the water and on rocks and twigs. The others are soon to follow.

Also tallied the past couple of weeks, were common green darner and common baskettail. The green darner (several of them over the weeks but always alone) were most likely migrants as this species is known to move north and south during spring and fall respectively.

The common baskettail was also seen on more than one occasion but they were local individuals and, like the blue corporal, are early season dragonflies which don’t typically make it into summer.

Keep your eyes open for all of these dragonflies as spring is moving quickly across the landscape. Blue corporals can easily be seen on the deck of the floating walkway, at least for now. They like to perch low to or one the ground so if you seen a dragonfly on the walkway, flat on the deck, it may be a corporal, check it out.

By the way, the name blue corporal supposedly comes from the fact that the insects, both male and female, have “2” marks or stripes dorsally on their thorax (shoulder), blue on the male and whitish on the female. A corporal in the military wears two stripes or chevrons to indicate their rank.

Have a good one, and if you see me out there, say hello.

*Odes = Odonata, the taxonomic order in which dragonflies belong.

Ranger Greg