Dragonfly Hatch

// October 14th, 2009 // Boreal Forest, Dragonflies-Butterflies-Moths, Insects

Welcome back to my website & thanks for visiting !
Dragonfly2

There are three stages in the dragonfly life cycle – egg, nymph and the adult dragonfly. Today’s blog features dragonfly nymphs. They look absolutely alien! The eggs are laid in water and the nymphs live in the water only to come up on shore on a suitable day for the adult dragonfly to emerge and unfurls its beautiful translucent wings.  These photos were taken in June alongside a small creek and there were many nymphs on the grass in various stages of emergence.  It was quite fascinating to watch. It looked to be a struggle crawling out of the casing and took quite a while but, after freeing themselves of the nymph casing, the dragonfly would slowly unfurl its wings and then proceed to dry them before taking to flight.

Dragonfly emerging one

Dragonfly emerging two

Dragonfly emerging

Below: The empty nymph shells stuck to the side of a boathouse.

Dragonfly nymph casing

Dragonfly nymph shell

Enjoy!

~Sharon

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2 Responses to “Dragonfly Hatch”

  1. Sharon says:
    October 15, 2009 at 2:57 pm

    Hi – so pleased to hear you are enjoying the blogs. It took quite a long time for the whole process from wiggling out of the nymph casing and drying out wings before taking to flight and was very interesting to watch.
    Sharon

  2. June Smith says:
    October 15, 2009 at 6:19 am

    good morning — you really do some amazing work

    It is wonderful that you share it with us out here

    thanks again

    June

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