Perhaps you were walking down the beach. They have very large eyes and hold their wings out straight when resting. Dragonflies are big, strong fliers. Most need an air temperature of at least 63 degrees to get moving.Dragonflies and damselflies belong to an ancient insect group called the Odonata, some of the earliest flying creatures on our planet. Please help us keep this unique regional magazine thriving, and support the ecosystem we’ve built around it, by subscribing today.Bay Nature connects the people of the San Francisco Bay Area to our natural world and motivates people to solve problems with nature in mind.Bay Nature’s email newsletter delivers local nature stories, hikes, and events to your inbox each week. (Repeats story to more subscribers with no changes) HANOI, July 16 (Reuters Life!) Why Do Dragonflies Swarm? Their cousins, damselflies, are smaller and have a weak, fluttery flight. However, the activity often increases before rains as pressure systems change and whatnot. She studies massive swarms of dragonflies that form when large groups of the colorful, aerial insects pause their migration to feed.“Dragonfly swarms are big groups of dragonflies that are typically feeding on little prey insects,” says Goforth, head of citizen science at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Share This: Last October, while hiking on Mount Tamalpais, near Laurel Dell, I saw numerous swarms of dragonflies. It could mean that rain is headed your way!
Last week I talked a bit about how weather affects odonate behavior, my favorite topic in biology. Dragonflies are not a bad species of insect to have in a yard -- they do no harm to humans, and their presence is a sign of a healthy ecosystem. - Can dragonflies warn of impending rain? Damselflies have small eyes and rest with their wings held up directly over their thorax.While driving through the Central Valley near Williams last August, I encountered thousands, maybe millions, of common green darners, our state’s second-largest dragonfly. Swarming dragonflies could be responding to a high mosquito population, but they also eat several fly species. These iridescent giants were in constant flight, hunting insects breeding in the standing water and irrigation ditches so prevalent in this fertile agricultural land. Your swarm sounds like a feeding swarm, and it’s not uncommon for them to form in areas even without rain, especially if you’ve been seeing them in your yard for a few weeks. As far as I could scan through binoculars in every direction for miles and miles, the air was filled with them. This is indirectly weather-related, because dragonflies are active only on warm days. 04:20 ... On why she loves dragonflies “For me, it's that they look so beautiful and delicate but they're so impressive.
It's best to let dragonflies be; they'll eat up pests, and they're fun to watch while they do it. If you've arrived here, you have likely seen something magical, amazing, terrifying, or utterly awe-inspiring. by Michael Ellis. There are over 60 kinds of dragonflies in California and more than 28 in the Bay Area, so mating strategies vary quite a bit among species. I mean they are amazing predators. Or triggered by weather or courtship?
In some species, males wait and pounce on females as they fly by, and there is little color difference between males and females. Sign up today: They are beneficial in many ways, and some gardeners strive to attract the insects into their yard. Today I'll go over the study I did to look at these weather related behaviors more closely.
Maybe it was in your backyard. Could you tell me more about this phenomenon? You might have even been zipping along the interstate in your car at the time. Is it seasonal? The males of other species, like the western pondhawk, establish territories over a patch of prime real estate (rich with insect prey—freshwater ponds, lakes, streams, rivers, even poorly maintained hot tubs) and chase off rival males and attempt to copulate with every female that comes into their range. Then there was the huge dust storm that I foolishly thought I could outbike to 8:15 and Guess, hehe. But it might not too. Wound up having to take shelter in a portapotty. Like the little study I did that focused on damselflies and weather in my … It was our first morning at our first Burning Man and we took the sighting as a good omen.
“So you can get anywhere from a dozen to millions or even billions of dragonflies flying together in these big groups.”She’s searching for the root of this behavior through a study called These swarms are so large they’re showing up on weather radars, which Goforth says isn’t unusual for these clusters of creatures.“The data that I've collected through my Dragonfly Swarm Project suggests that disturbances play a really important role in this behavior so that anytime you get fires or floods or big storms or even people mowing their lawns is enough to kind of kick up a bunch of little insects that the dragonflies will take advantage of.” April 1, 2008 .
Get stories about Northern California nature and what makes it unique in Those dragonflies were most likely congregating to hunt, catch, and eat abundant insects that were also swarming. ya, I saw the dragonflies whirling about while at a friend's camp on Last Chance and 6:35. The aquatic insect expert doesn’t just study solo dragonflies. But, you saw it: tens to thousands to millions of dragonflies… I suspect the latter may be what you saw. This widespread dragonfly, which grows to about two inches long and varies in color from pink to tan to dull gray, can be active year-round in the Bay Area, even in winter.The swarming you saw probably had nothing to do with mating.