The weather has gotten decidedly colder, with daily high temperatures struggling to get past 60 degrees (16 degrees C). I am beginning to wonder if this female bluet that I saw last week at Huntley Meadows Park will be my final damselfly sighting of the season.
I was fairly confident that this was a female Familiar Bluet damselfly (Enallagma civile), but once again I learned how difficult identification can be when I posted the image to a Facebook forum for dragonflies and damselflies in Virginia. Several experts weighed in with suggestions that the eyespots made then think it was a female Atlantic Bluet (Enallagma doubledayi), a species that I have never before encountered.
How hard can it be to identify a damselfly? One of the aforementioned experts noted that “you cannot be completely sure about many female Enallagma without microscopic examination.” Microscopic examination? Yikes!
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 