Blue Dasher, female
Pachydiplax longipennis
Blue Dasher · Brooklyn Botanic Garden · 13 August 2026
A female or immature Blue Dasher at the very tip of a leaf bud in the August border, wings held slightly forward. Blue Dashers are the commonest pond dragonfly across most of the United States, and the Botanic Garden's ponds breed them by the hundred; this one is well back in the planting, which the species does as readily as it sits over water.
Green eyes and a plain tawny-brown body mark a female or a young male. Only mature males take on the powder-blue abdomen that gives the species its name.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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