Common Green Darner, banking
Anax junius
Common Green Darner · Brooklyn Botanic Garden · 31 August 2025
A Common Green Darner banked hard in flight over the garden pond at the end of August. It is the big dragonfly of every park pond in North America, breeding in still water from Canada to Mexico, and in late summer the northern ones gather to migrate south.
The bank shows the two pairs of wings working independently of each other, the front pair on one beat and the back pair on another, which is the trick that gives dragonflies flight control no fly or damselfly can match. They can hover, reverse and turn in their own length. The migration is a relay of generations, south in autumn and north the following spring.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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