(HOST) A drowsy summer afternoon can be deceptive, according to commentator Ted Levin. He says that if you look beyond the quiet surface, it can be full of dramatic action.
(LEVIN) It was the perfect day for dragonflies, warm and hot, still. Above a corner of the of yard, partially confined by the kitchen and sunroom, a half-a-mile from the wetlands, they circled and dipped, like grains of rice in a rolling boil, a frenzy of dragonflies.
Why were they here? Why now?
Only a handful coursed above the pasture, where the horses attracted what I thought was a bountiful harvest of flies and mosquitoes, or above the garden, where white butterflies fluttered from broccoli to broccoli, proclaiming their edibility. But the dragonflies had eyes only for this a small corner of lawn – gorgeous round compound eyes that transmit a hundred images simultaneously like a curved wall of flickering TV screens .
Here they gathered, a cloud of dragonflies, long, transparent wings brushing windows, cedar clapboards, rose bushes, and me, stirring the otherwise still air.
Perhaps there was more than one species in the mix. It was hard to focus on any one particular dragonfly – the scene was perpetual motion. I did recognized one species however, the common green darner by its flashy blue abdomen, the so-called "darning needle" of my childhood that it was said would sew a boy’s mouth shut if he sassed his mother. Green darners are more than common; they’re abundant (perhaps the most abundant dragonfly in North America). Green darners appear in Vermont in late April, having ridden the wind up from Connecticut, New York or New Jersey. A sort of aimless migration that may explain why the common green darner ranges throughout North America south into Mexico, and east to the Bahamas, Bermuda, and the West Indies south to Martinique; they’ve even touched down in Hawaii, Tahiti, and along the east coast of Asia.
The iridescent blue abdomen, green thorax, and four-inch wingspan make them easy to identify. Their arrival in this airspace above the front yard was purposeful, competitive, and short-lived.
Every phase of a dragonfly’s life is hunt and be hunted. As naiads young dragonflies creep around pond and lake bottoms catching tadpoles, small fish, and other immature aquatic insects, and they in turn are gobbled up by sunfish and bass. As adults they eat any flying insect they can capture in their spiky, net-like front legs – bees, wasps, moths, butterflies, horseflies, deerflies, and smaller dragonflies. Occasionally they even attack hummingbirds.
I’ve watched migrating kestrels and merlins catch migrating dragonflies over coastal sand dunes and feed on the wing, leaving behind an ephemeral rain of transparent wings. Kingbirds eat dragonflies. Also redwings.
Then I noticed a swarm of winged ants rising from the edges of a slate walkway. To confirm my suspicions, I tossed an ant into the air and watched it disappear amid a swirl of wings.
An hour later, when the ant exodus ended, the dragonflies left, a roving band of aerial predators in search of another windfall.
Ted Levin is a writer, photographer and winner of the 2004 Burroughs Medal for Nature Writing.