Common Green Darner

Anax junius · Dragonflies & damselflies

Common Green Darner, banking

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.

Common Green Darner in flight

Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 31 August 2025

A male Common Green Darner in flight over the pond at the Botanic Garden at the end of August, the blue abdomen and green thorax both catching full sun. Green darners breed in still water across the whole continent, and the ones over Brooklyn now are getting ready to leave.

One of the fastest fliers among North American dragonflies, and a migrant: a generation flies south each autumn as far as Mexico and their offspring return in spring, riding the same fronts as the birds. Radar picks up the swarms.

Common Green Darner

Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 26 July 2025

A tandem pair of Common Green Darners at the pond in the Botanic Garden in July, the male grasping the female behind the head while she curls down to lay eggs into a torn lily pad. Green darners breed in still water across the whole of North America and are the big dragonfly of every park pond.

They are among the few dragonflies known to migrate. A generation hatched in the north flies south in autumn, breeds, and dies, and it is their offspring that fly north again the following spring, a relay nobody understood until the 2010s.