Dragonflies are so beautiful that I sometimes forget that they are also fierce predators. Last weekend at my local marsh, I captured this image of a female Eastern Pondhawk dragonfly (Erythemis simplicicollis) feeding on another dragonfly, which looks like it might be a female Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis).
The dragonfly is perched on the end of one of the slats of a railing that along the edge of an inclined section of the boardwalk. I cropped the image to focus viewers’ attention on the dragonfly, but I also like the second version of the same photo, which is close to the original view when I took the shot. Somehow those three slats remind me of a row of tombstones, a memorial to the predator’s prey.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
R.I.P. Blue Dasher.
Great shot! It’s a tough world out there.
Thanks. One minute you are the predator and suddenly you can become the prey. All species need food and they find it however they can.
Er, I should have said “Rest in pieces, Blue Dasher.”
Walter is so funny, but it is green! Very beautiful captures with a great story. It really is hard to think of them as monsters to other insects. They are pretty and look so fragile although not.
The Blue Dasher, alas, is the one being eaten and is not at all blue–the male is blue, but the female, like the one in the photo, is not.
What a catch, in both senses of the word!
Thanks, Gary. I still am in search of a Dragonhunter, a large dragonfly that is at the top of the food chain when it comes to catching other dragonflies. They tend to favor a different habitat, so I find myself hiking along (and through) small streams recently.
Dragonhunters (Hagenius sp.) are our most popular (and among the most common) dragonflies around our cabin in Minnesota. They usually emerge as adults around the first week in July, to our great relief–they really noticeably reduce the mosquito population in very short order! I’ve done a couple of posts featuring them over the years, but so far only as the adults emerge from their nymph cases.
Interesting. I knew about the dragon hunter, but I didn’t know that any dragonfly would eat another.
I don’t know for sure how many other dragonflies prey on other dragonflies, but I had heard that Eastern Pondhawks did so. This was this first time, however, that I had seen one do with a dragonfly prey.
Macabre but beautiful and you’re right about the tombstones
[…] Preying dragonfly […]