Before today, I had never heard of an eight-spotted skimmer. I found pictures of a twelve-spotted skimmer, but they have an extra black spot on the end of each wingtip.

I used to be terrified of dragonflies, and nearly went off the road when one flew into the open window of my car and beat itself up on the back window as it tried to get out.

But since Belinda Grover started showing her close-up photos of insects of all sorts in her blog posts, I have learned to appreciate their beauty. Just click on her name to link to her blogsite.

 

The photo below was taken by a local friend, and because of Belinda’s photos of many other insects, I took a closer look at my friend’s photo and did a search to find out its name.

These dragonflies only live to be one to three years old, and most of that is in their larval stage (before they get wings which help with the mating stage), but during that winged time they eat all kinds of obnoxious smaller insects that we consider pests or that do harm to our crops. So welcome dragonflies. Eat all the little biting flies you can find. It’s too bad that this part of their life only last for about two to four weeks.

One of my favourite haiku poems (not mine) is about a dragonfly.

The dragonfly

his face is very nearly

only eye.