Eastern Ringtail

No not an exotic cat from far away, it is a clubtail dragonfly. These Eastern Ringtails are a new species for me! I heard about them being found at Falls lake and headed over when I got the chance, it was not very sunny and I missed them on the first try.

I returned the next week on a very sunny day and found a fair number of them. The males are perching at the top of the dam and the females at the bottom.

Female Eastern Ringtail (Erpetogomphus designatus) isn't she beautiful?

male above and below Eastern Ringtail (Erpetogomphus designatus)

Above and below they are oblisking to cool off.

Female Eastern Ringtail (Erpetogomphus designatus) females do not have the club like shown on the males.

At around 2 inches I expected them to be larger for some reason. They blended in to the environment quite well and vanished when the clouds came over. Funny with over 10 years of hunting dragonflies I'd never seen them and these were found an hour away from here.

Odonates a little about them!

Well it looks like we have made it though the hard freezes here in North Carolina, the greens did fine. Today it is expected to get to 64 degrees, then the possibility of rain for the next 3 days. So with not much gardening going on I came up with this post.

I've been chasing odonates for many years, odonates means dragonflies and damselflies from the order of Odonata.

Do you know how to quickly tell them apart? Come on think about this one..

Ok, I'll tell you dragonflies always perch, well at least the ones you see perching with the wings flat open like this female Yellow-sided Skimmer on the right.

Damselflies always perch with their wings closed over their backs like this Sparkling Jewelwing. Jewelwing females are easy to tell by the white stigma near the top edge of the wings.

There is one exception to damselflies having closed wings behind their backs, the spreadwing damselflies. Spreadwings hold the wings partly open like this male Southern Spreadwing.

Speadwings are my favorite damselfies as the are hard to find and always found along ponds and marsh edges unlike some of the other damselfies that travel away from water a good bit. Telling them apart is another thing altogether.