Mike Powell

The weather has warmed up considerably and I have started to see many of the spring dragonflies and even some of those that will remain with us through the summer. Last Friday I spotted numerous Ashy Clubtail dragonflies (Phanogomphus lividus), many of which appeared to have emerged recently, judging from their very shiny wings and pale coloration, as you can see in the first photo. Getting shots of them was tough, because they perch on the ground in the vegetation, are only about 2 inches in length (50 mm), and are often very skittish.

Kevin Munroe described well the challenges of finding early spring dragonflies in his wonderful Dragonflies of Northern Virginia website, “Searching for dragonflies in spring is a wholly different endeavor than finding them in July and August. Most summer dragonflies spend their time at sunny ponds or open fields, and engage in showy displays and aerial battles – they are, in a word, visible. The majority belong to the showy and successful skimmer family, along with a few darners and emeralds. The spring dragonfly community is more diverse, and has a very different M.O. They are for the most part, habitat specialists, with low population numbers, secretive habits, and denizens of woodland streams, not sunny ponds. Spiketails, Petaltails, Clubtails, Darners and Emeralds are all out and about in spring. To find these species in April and May, one must spend many hours searching forest edges, woodland clearings, and the banks of springs, streams and creeks.”

In fact, I photographed these Ashy Clubtails in the vegetation near a creek in Prince William County and I can testify to the fact that I walked about for hours searching for them. I am pretty happy with the photos that I was able to take. I especially like the second photo that has some really cool shadows that seem to magnify the number of legs and wings of the dragonfly.

The final two photos were taken only a few seconds apart and show the wings in very different positions. The penultimate photo shows the wings in a typical outstretched pose, while the final photo shows the wings clasped together over the dragonfly’s body, similar to the way that damselflies hold their wings when perched. In my experience recently emerged dragonflies sometimes flex their wings this way as fluid is pumped into the wings and the wings are hardening.

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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During the summer it seems like dragonflies are everywhere, perching prominently in plain sight in all kinds of environments, but this early in the season there are a whole lot fewer of them and the ones that are around are relatively hard to find. Last week, though, I was blessed to encounter quite a few Ashy Clubtail dragonflies (Phanogomphus lividus) while I was exploring a creek in Prince William County, Virginia.

The Dragonflies of Northern Virginia website, one of my favorite on-line dragonfly resources, described well the environment in which to find this species. “To find Ashies, look for clean, stable, rocky forest streams and then search out the closest sunny clearing, stream-side meadow or sunlit path. Like Common Whitetails and Blue Corporals, Ashy Clubtails prefer to perch flat on bare-soil, fallen logs, rocks or leaf litter.”

Most of the Ashy Clubtails that I spotted were in fact perched in the middle of the trails that I was following, like the one in the final photo. Although the dragonflies are sometimes skittish, it is relatively easy to get a photo of one, albeit with a fairly uninteresting background. The Ashy Clubtail in the first photo has a somewhat more interesting pose, with a nice shadow to add some visual interest.

My favorite photo of this little group, however, has to be the middle one. I really like the confrontational pose of the female Ashy Clubtail as she perched on a leaf and looked right at me. In case you are curious, the dragonflies in the first and second photos are females and the one in the final photo is the male. If you look carefully at the tips of their abdomens (their “tails”), you can see that only the males have terminal appendages that look like a sidewards-facing parenthesis and are quite distinctive.

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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