Bluet
Enallagma sp.
Bluet · Brooklyn Botanic Garden · 24 August 2025
A bluet in the August border with prey still in its jaws. Bluets are damselflies of ponds and slow water across North America, and the Botanic Garden's ponds breed them by the hundred; the borders around them are where they hunt.
Damselflies are active predators even at rest, taking small flying insects out of the air or, as here, off nearby vegetation. The bluets are the largest damselfly genus in North America and among the hardest to separate: several species share this exact blue-and-black pattern, and a confident call usually needs a clear view of the tip of the abdomen.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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