Our first-ever dragonfly workshop on Thursday proved to be a great success, with both the weather and the dragonflies themselves behaving admirably! The previous few days had seen an impressive arrival of immigrant dragonflies from the south, so we started down the point, surrounded by Spot-winged Gliders and Migrant Hawkers - two of the latter even hung themselves up in a bush for us to get super close views of. Bunker Pond and - shortly after - Lake Lily gave us great opportunities to enjoy a wide range of generalist species which do well in the rather poor wetland habitats at the point and there was a clear difference in appearance between the non-breeding, duller individuals in the state park and the smart, colorful individuals inhabiting more suitable breeding conditions at Lake Lily. Halloween Pennant, Eastern Amberwing and the diminutive Rambur's Forktail were all enjoyed and we saw at least six individuals of Four-spotted Pennant, a species that is rare in New Jersey, being confined to just a handful of sites in Cape May and Cumberland counties.
Heading north, we next visited some old sand pits near Lizard-tail Swamp. The different waters here gave us a suite of different species with Seaside Dragonlets being plentiful in all their various color forms and we restled with the problems of identifying some of the bluets. A nice find was a freshly emerged, as yet unidentifiable, damselfly, still drying its wings beside its now-abandoned nymphal case or exuvia. After a slideshow to recap some of the identification points and to look closer at the ecology of dragonflies, we finished the day with a visit to Tarkiln Bog. Lilypad Forktails were the stars here and we also chanced upon a Dragonhunter - a chunky brute that eats other dragonfly species!
Full species list:
Familiar Bluet
Atlantic Bluet
Azure Bluet
Citrine Forktail
Eastern Forktail
Rambur's Forktail
Lilypad Forktail
Green Darner
Comet Darner
Dragonhunter
Common Whitetail
Widow Skimmer
Twelve-spotted Skimmer
Slaty Skimmer
Needham's Skimmer
Seaside Dragonlet
Eastern Amberwing
Blue Dasher
Eastern Pondhawk
Spot-winged Glider
Black Saddlebags
Carolina Saddlebags
Four-spotted Pennant
Halloween Pennant
Calico Pennant
