Description
A blue damselfly on a green stem at Oaks Bottom, working through a fly it has just caught. Wings still half open, prey held in its front legs, one bronze eye turned toward the camera without the least concern.
They are graceful, unhurried flyers — nothing like a dragonfly for speed. You find them in the late evening in the long grass near the shore of the lake, drifting about a foot above the tops of the stems, and if you move slowly they will let you get remarkably close.
It turns out that unhurried quality is not laziness. It is a different hunting strategy, and this photograph is it.
Dragonflies are hawkers. They take prey out of open air at speed, in flight, which is why they patrol back and forth over water like fighter aircraft. Damselflies mostly glean instead — drifting slowly through vegetation and picking small insects directly off leaves and stems, then carrying the catch to a perch to eat it. Slow flight is the whole point. You cannot pluck an aphid off a blade of grass at thirty miles an hour.
Which is also why the evening shoreline grass is exactly where you find them, and why they are so approachable. A hawker has to keep moving. A gleaner can afford to potter.
Look at how it is holding the meal. A damselfly’s six legs are set well forward on the body and bristled along their length, and in flight they fold into a basket beneath the head — a scoop for grabbing prey and then a plate to eat off. Those legs are close to useless for walking. They are cutlery.
The diet is mostly midges, small flies, aphids and mosquitoes, in quantity, all day. A garden pond with damselflies in it has a working mosquito program that nobody had to install.
One more thing worth knowing about that blue. In many damselflies it is not a stable color — it responds to temperature, and a cold individual can look markedly darker and duller than the same insect will an hour later in the sun. If you find a disappointingly drab one early in the morning, go back at midday.
This is a high-resolution digital download of the photograph, made at Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge in Portland, Oregon — yours to print for your home or office, set as a wallpaper, or simply keep.
What you’ll receive: a very large JPEG, approximately 4180 × 4096 pixels — near enough a square, sharp enough to print at full photo quality up to about 13.5 inches on a side at 300 DPI, and considerably larger for wall display. Delivered as an instant download the moment your order is complete.
License: Personal use only. Print it for your own home, use it as a wallpaper or screen background, enjoy it yourself. Not licensed for commercial use, resale, redistribution, or AI training. © Jonathan Swanson / JonSwan Productions. All rights reserved.
