Restoring Bottomland Prairie: A Tale of Two Julys (2015 vs. 2016, Part 7)

What we lacked in butterflies in July 2016 we made up for in dragonflies.

We have always had dragonflies, but they have appeared in different places, depending on what prey-bugs have hatched and where.

I've often wished to have x-ray vision in order to understand the underground waterways of the Flint Hills.

Now I wish I had telephoto-vision, in order to see what dragonflies are feeding on.  

The first year of our restoration, as annual weeds took over the field, huge numbers of dragonflies swarmed just overhead, feeding on something too small to see.  

The next two years,including July 2015, I didn't notice any large swarms.   

I remember thinking back nostalgically to that magnificent first-year swarm and wondering if I would ever see such a sight again.

I did see occasional flyers, such as this Common Whitetail male in the Creek Buffer in July 2015:   

Male Common Whitetail (Libellula lydia)
Creek Buffer, July 16, 2015

But a swarm?  No.

This year, however, I did find dragonflies in large concentrations, but not over the Creek Field itself.  This time they were in open corridors of low vegetation, such as in the air space over the driveway or the mowed area around the pole barn.  When I did find them in the burgeoning vegetation of the Creek Field, it was one at a time, and they were not flying, just resting low down on tall stems.    

Here is a video clip of dragonflies from July 2016, perched singly on stems or cruising in large numbers over open areas.   Two species predominate--the Widow Skimmer and the Common Whitetail--but it appears to be four, because the sexes differ.   

If you want to follow along with me learning the differences, note that the male Widow Skimmer has a white abdomen with white wing patches, while the female has a large black spot at the wing-base and a longitudinal yellow stripe down her abdomen.  The first two dragonflies shown in the clip are the male Widow Skimmer and the female Widow Skimmer.   The Common Whitetail male has a white abdomen with a tiny white dot at the hind-wing-base, while the female Whitetail is colored a beautiful amber, with no white on her body at all.   

These two species are among the most common dragonflies in North America, so with them we get lots of chances to practice our identifications!  

Dragonfly feeding-swarms are like a dye that renders visible a second, invisible swarm--a swarm of prey-insects too tiny to see.

In the order Odonata with the dragonflies are the equally carnivorous damselflies.  Among the loveliest of damselflies is the Ebony Jewelwing, which last July as this July, appeared in the shady woods along McDowell Creek.  The sexes are similar except for a white dot on the females' wings.   

Ebony Jewelwings are among Ron's favorite creatures in the world, so we took some time this summer to linger in the Creek Buffer with our cameras.   The result was the following video.    Here are Ebony Jewelwing females in July 2016, perching and flying along McDowell Creek:   

Like dragonflies, damselflies are a life form so ancient they were flying when our Flint Hills limestones were still just shelled creatures floating in Permian seas!  

Related to the old question (If a tree falls in the forest and no one's there to hear it, does it still make a sound?) is this one:  Were dragonflies and damselflies still beautiful when humans (who would not appear for another 200 million years) were not yet there to see them?    

On the verge of extinguishing ourselves with our anti-environmental actions, we can still answer, Yes!  

Beauty is in the force of all creation, not in the eye of a johnny-come-lately, self-aggrandizing, narcissistic species that would dream up the absurdity of a "forest"--or any other ecosystem--where, if humans happen to be absent, "no one is!"