Bug-Chicka-WOW-WOW!

Hi all, it’s Kristine. I’m usually the emergency non-medical holorecorder (i.e. Dennis’s backup blogger) for when he’s too sick, busy or burned out to do the weekly post, but this time, it’s for a special occasion and I volunteered to do it this time with a great deal of enthusiasm. 

And that time is for the time of year when everything and everybug in nature is doing their darndest to keep their specie going on the planet.

We’ve had a few busy weeks as of late and when downtime comes a callin’, we take advantage of it to get out to our favorite local dragonfly-mating rendezvous – the duck pond habitat in the fruit orchards at CSUN – Cal State Northridge.

This is the earliest we’ve been there in the season. Usually we go in May when we’re sure the latest generation of dragonfly larvae have shed their skins and emerged, but we thought it’d be fun to see them early this year. We knew they were around since we’ve been buzzed by several around our apartment complex.

Another tell-tale sign they’re around is when the mosquitos are about – a dragonfly’s favorite snack – and the snacks have been around the past couple of weeks. 

It’s as Dennis calls them – nature’s “pretzels”, since mosquitoes have long legs. I am going to include that in my writing someday – I even know which story it’ll be in. I just haven’t gotten around to writing it yet.

We were greeted by a “turtle breeding season” sign coming into the parking lot. That usually means CSUN has closed off the main entrance to the waterway leading to the pond from the parking lot, but this time they hadn’t gotten around to doing that yet. We parked and headed to our first stop – a small waterfall at the Northwest end of the pond.

It didn’t take long to see our first few friends. As soon as we hit the bench, we saw red skimmer dragonflies and the smaller, skinnier, blue damselflies. I was surprised at how small the damselflies were compared to when we usually come. Sure, it’s early in the season, but the orange dragonflies didn’t look too much smaller than they usually do. The size difference was definitely more exaggerated in their tinier, stick-like cousins.

This early in the season NO BUG was sitting still for a photo opportunity. Usually dragonflies will perch for at least a few seconds on a reed or long leaf of a water plant – and it’s always the same spot, like it’s their base of operations where they survey their territory. But this time, their rest stops barely lasted a second, if that. In all the time I’ve been around them (way before coming to CSUN), I have never seen them so crazy-active like this!

Dennis could barely take a step towards them before ZOOM! they were off again.