Earlier this evening I was pulling some weeds in our little herb garden when I noticed something attached to a basil leaf that was definitely not a weed:
I’m no entomologist, but this looks like a dragonfly to me. Although it’s way cooler than any other dragonfly I’ve seen before. This is much better than my previous attempt at close up wildlife photography. The bug let me snap a few pictures then regally flew over to a strawberry plant, where I was able to get another decent shot:
After reading about dragonflies, I’m glad I have them. Among their prey are mosquitoes. And even though this summer is just a week old (officially), I’m already unable to count the bites. So anything that looks as cool as a dragonfly and eats mosquitoes is fine with me.
Nice shots! I wish I had some dragonflies to kill the mosquitoes. I have to rely on spiders for that. I was out for 15 minutes yesterday cleaning up paint and was attacked by those little buggers. I think I need a bug zapper.
I heard dragonflies like to eat beets.
It’s freaking Mothra!
Mosquito hawks … don’t you remember that’s what they were called when you went to New Orleans during the summers? Mosquito hawks were everywhere during the spring & summer in Louisiana; the little browns & blues, the super-fast greens with black & white tails … and the big ones (like in your photos} that we called ‘parrots’.
The beets are fine so far–nice try, Civee. Haven’t seen any more dragonflies since I posted this, so hopefully they weren’t passing through. And if there’s an invasion, I hope it won’t take Godzilla to get rid of them.
And actually, yeah, now I do remember mosquito hawks.