It was cool enough out there in the wind on Friday that I decided to build a fire in the Shelter at the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden. The wind was tossing the tree tops around like seaweed along the ocean shore. I went about my morning opening the Shelter and filling the bird feeders including the suet feeder in the hopes the pileated woodpecker would return that day. I reached out for the screen door handle to go inside and get some bird seed only to quickly pull my hand back in surprise. There right on the handle was a dragonfly taking shelter from the wind and cold on the porch and probably feeling the heat coming inside. I laughed at the funny noise that came out of me and then gently let the insect crawl onto my finger. I placed it on the porch bench and went inside to grab a plastic terrerium. I decided to bring the dragonfly inside to warm up and get out of the wind.
Upon closer inspection, I discovered my dragonfly friend was a Common Green Darner and a female. These dragonflies are one of the larger ones around and also one of the most common, found all over the United States and southern Canada. These are the ones that are seen along ponds and lakes a few feet about the surface of the water, but they can also be seen farther away from water in the uplands. They are strong fliers (they are good size) and I have seen them on the high cliffs along Lake Superior battling the lakeshore breezes patrolling for mosquitoes. Early autumn is a great time to see green darners inland.
Male green darners are have green thorax (the middle section of the body between the head and abdomen) and a blue abdomen with a black stripe going down the middle. Females also have a green thorax, but their abdomen is a rusty, brick-red color though sometimes it looks violet. Both sexes have large compound eyes that are a dull green color with a bull's-eye pattern on the forehead.
On this chilly, windy day my female darner was looking stunned. I put her gently in the plastic "bug box" and brought her inside. She flitted a few times, but not much. I continued to fill the bird feeders while keeping and eye on her.
Common Green Darners are truly amazing (as are all Odonatas if you ask me!). There are some green darners that will migrate in search of food. We are not talking great distances like the monarch butterfly (the most famous of the migrating insects), but they will still leave their "home" and travel many miles in search of good eats. What do they eat? Thankfully they eat those pesky biting insects (I love watching them patrol!), but they also eat other, smaller dragonflies and some have been seen eating hummingbirds!!
I finished filling the feeders and checked in on my dragonfly friend. She was making an awful lot of noise - flitting about and bumping into the sides and top of her enclosure. I knew I needed to let her go and her warming up was only temporary. But I told myself, if she can fly into Lake Superior shoreline head winds and if she can hunt down a hummingbird for dinner, I think she can handle a windy, cool fall-like day. So I brought the "bug box" out onto the porch of the Shelter and opened the lid carefully. A swirling gust of chilled air rushed down the slopes leading into the bottom of the Garden where the Shelter sits. In a flash, she was sucked out of the container and rode the wind up into the Ohio buckeyes and headed along the ridge where the woodlands meets the prairie in the Garden. I hoped that she would find refuge from the wind and chill somewhere in the conifers that line the woods surrounding the prairie and that she made it through the cool nights to follow.
I'd like to think she did. I'd like to think that she began flying south to a sheltered pond out of the wind. That she deposited her eggs just below the surface of the water so another generation of green darners could patrol the skies eating mosquitoes and biting flies for us.
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