Calvert County Dragonfly Season is Here - 30th of March, 2020
Went for a hike in Calvert Cliffs State Park yesterday (March 30, 2020) afternoon after hearing at noontime that a Maryland-wide Stay-at-Home order would go into effect at 8:00 PM in response to the Coronavirus Pandemic. I was rewarded with the first dragonflies of 2020 - many Common Green Darners zipping about the aquatic plants and seemingly never resting. Trying to get photographs was a near impossibility (for me at least), but I was able to capture one blurry image of a Darner momentarily hovering and then a second poor image of the same Darner when it landed on vegetation for a brief second. It also just missed becoming a lunchtime meal when a frog with poor aim took a shot at it as it flew by.
The Common Green Darner is truly one of the more interesting dragonflies by virtue of its migratory behavior. Their annual migration involves two migratory and one non-migratory generations. In the spring, the first generation makes a long distance northbound migration, lays its eggs, and dies. The second generation emerges and will make the return trip southward, lay its eggs, and dies. The third generation is a resident generation at the southern locale and does not migrate. They will emerge, reproduce locally, lay eggs, and then dies. Their offspring will migrate northward the following spring to complete the cycle. Reference: Hallworth, MT, et al., Biology Letters, 14(2) 2018.
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