You never know what you might come across wandering around in the wetlands around the cattle egret rookery. In case you haven’t guessed by now, I’ve been spending quite a bit of time there this summer. The egrets are most certainly interesting, but I’ve found so much other wildlife out there, too. One thing I’ve seen a lot of is dragonflies, but up until this week I hadn’t seen any damselflies. Then along came this gorgeous little familiar bluet (Enallagma civile), also sometimes called a civil bluet. He perched himself on a grass stem just in the range of my telephoto lens. Then he posed nicely for long enough for me to get a few photos from several angles. As you can see, he’s quite the handsome little guy.

Bluets, like most dragonflies and damselflies, are sexually dimorphic, so I can easily identify this one as a male. The female looks similar in size and in pattern, but she is gold or light brown and black instead of blue and black. These pretty creatures can be found through most of North America in any place that there is water. They are very common in wetlands, marshes, prairies, lakes, ponds, and slow moving rivers and streams, but sometimes they can even be found near puddles of rain water. They feed on small insects in both their adult and their larval or naiad stages. The adults that we all know and love are terrestrial and eat many pest insects while the naiads are aquatic and feed on other aquatic insects, including mosquito larvae. It’s always enjoyable to see damselflies and dragonflies, and it’s especially nice to add a new species to the life list. Even though these guys are pretty common, they were a new species for me, so needless to say, it was quite exciting to have one literally present itself and pose so nicely. Now I’m hoping I can find a female.