Damselfly on western ironweed

I’ve always found western ironweed (Vernonia baldwinii) hard to photograph. Not so this dameslfly on the buds thereof along Bull Creek on July 1st. In looking at John Abbott’s book Damselflies of Texas, I figured this damselfly was in the genus Hetaerina but I wasn’t sure about the species. Yesterday on bugguide.net entomologist T. Hedlund identified the species as Hetaerina americana, known as the American rubyspot. The one I photographed seems to have been a female.

UPDATE: from a different frame I’ve added a closeup showing the details in one segment of the abdomen and a part of the wing. Till now I hadn’t paid attention to the transverse black markings on the iridescent blue.

Unrelated thought for today: “Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” — George Santayana in The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress. The last sentence is famous but often gets misquoted. Much worse, many people refuse to learn that lesson.

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

From Monday to Wednesday

On Monday evening, October 23rd, I bought a copy of John Abbott’s Damselflies of Texas. On Wednesday at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center I photographed these two reddish damselflies in the penultimate stage of their mating sequence on a fern. Thanks to the field guide I’d so recently come home with, I identified them as desert firetails, Telebasis salva. They’re small, with a body length of from 24–29mm, or roughly one inch.

I see that the Spanish name for this damselfly is caballito del diablo. That means ‘little horse of the devil,’ presumably because of the red color. If you’d like to see more details of these little devil’s horses, click the excerpt below.

© 2017 Steven Schwartzman

Dancers

Click for greater size and detail.

On August 1st at the Doeskin Ranch I photographed this springwater dancer, Argia plana. I pluralized the post’s title because I’ve learned that the damselfly with parasitic mites on it that I showed you last month is a dusky dancer, Argia transplana.

© 2016 Steven Schwartzman

Damselfly with unwelcome hangers-on

When I first saw something like this years ago I thought the little red things were eggs, but then I learned that they’re parasitic mites. Sorry, damselfly.

This July 23rd picture is from the Muir Lake Trail, a place in Cedar Park where I’d never taken pictures before.

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman

Aztec dancer and ant

I took this photograph close to a waterfall off Harrogate Dr. in northwest Austin last year on 7/24. Whether the ant ran any risk of getting eaten by the Aztec dancer damselfly, Argia nahuana, I don’t know, but the date reminds me of something I do know, namely that 7 and 24 are the perpendicular sides of a 7-24-25 right triangle because 7 squared plus 24 squared equals 25 squared. Other right triangles with the shortest side an odd number are  5-12-13,  9-40-41,  11-60-61,  13-84-85,  and the familiar 3-4-5. Can you figure out how to get the two longer sides of each right triangle of this type if you know only the shortest side?

(Speaking of math, did anyone notice that the number 63 that played a role in yesterday’s post can be written in base 2 as 111111?)

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman

Small blue damselfly

On July 24th, while exploring near the waterfall adjacent to Harrogate Dr. that I mentioned in yesterday’s deer post, I photographed a damselfly and its prominent shadow. This obliging insect, which wasn’t much more than an inch long (maybe 3 cm), appears to be one of the “dancers” that comprise the genus Argia. From a look at John C. Abbott’s Dragonflies and Damselflies of Texas…., I’d say this is an Aztec dancer, Argia nahuana (Nahua is the Aztec word for ‘Aztec’).

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman