Ode to a Mighty Hunter

On the grassy edge of a dry irrigation canal, an emerald green insect darted about in the air. Then it landed on the limb of a thorny mesquite.

Armed with a camera, amateur naturalist Tripp Davenport of Uvalde aimed his long lens at the dazzling dragonfly and quickly snapped photos before it flitted away.

That morning in July 2017, he had visited the National Butterfly Center in South Texas in hopes of spotting a red-mantled skimmer, a dragonfly from central Mexico that rarely ventures into Texas. Instead he found something even more special.

“When I looked at my images, I realized it was a dragonfly that I’d never seen before,” says Davenport, a high school teacher and Medina Electric Cooperative member. “And I’ve seen nearly all of them in Texas.”

Perplexed and excited, he called and texted pictures to some fellow naturalists. One beelined to Davenport’s location. Another researched records and nailed down the species. “It was a secretive darner that had only been photographed twice before, in central Mexico,” Davenport says. “My adrenaline was running!”

When you’re a dragonfly chaser, that’s what can happen. Like avid bird watchers, many chasers keep life lists of every species they’ve seen. Similarly, they may travel long distances in pursuit of dragonflies. Damselflies, too. The closely related insects, which have two pairs of long wings, elongated bodies and large compound eyes, are listed in the taxonomic group Odonata (derived from odont, a Greek root word for “tooth” that refers to their large chewing mandibles).

Luckily for Texans, our state is home to hundreds of species.

Odonates (chasers call them “odes”) can typically be found near water but not exclusively. Their bodies come in a rainbow of hues—red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple along with black and white. They can alternately beat and rotate their four membranous wings, enabling them to zip in all directions and even backward.

Using their aerial agility, odes hunt in the air and use their strong legs to snatch prey, such as butterflies, mosquitoes, bees and other insects, including other dragonflies. Odes have excellent vision, too. Not even the tiniest movement escapes their compound eyes made of thousands of tiny eyes called ommatidia.

Of the two groups, dragonflies can generally be identified by their thicker bodies and hindwings that are broader at their base than the forewings. They fly higher than damselflies and can reach speeds of up to 35 mph. At rest, dragonflies hold their wings open whereas damselflies fold their wings over their toothpick-thin bodies.

Worldwide, odonate species total more than 6,430, a number that’s tracked virtually at Odonata Central. The website maintains an extensive database compiled from information submitted by users who report their dragonfly sightings and upload photos. According to the site, more than 490 odonate species occur in the U.S., and more than half (251 species) have been documented in Texas.

John Abbott, a Texas native who serves as the director of museum research and collections at the Alabama Museum of Natural History, has studied and written about dragonflies and damselflies since the early 1990s. Among his many publications, Abbott has authored Damselflies of Texas and Dragonflies of Texas, field guides published by the University of Texas Press.

In his opinion, there’s no better place than Texas to chase dragonflies.

“The state holds a unique geographic position where there’s mixing of eastern and western faunas and temperate and subtropical faunas,” Abbott explains. “This leads to the large number of odonate species that can be regularly observed in the state and tremendous opportunities for new species to be documented.”

He credits a growing number of natural history enthusiasts interested in odonates for making major contributions to what’s known about the species of Texas.

Among them are enthusiasts like Davenport and Martin Reid, a retired computer programmer from San Antonio who used to photograph mostly birds and butterflies.

“I got interested in dragonflies in 2001 when I saw a cool-looking insect eating one of my butterflies,” Reid recalls. “I took a picture, and that was it. I was hooked on dragonflies.”

Since then, Reid has sought out odonates across the country as well as in Mexico, Peru, Panama, England and other distant places. But he prefers to focus on Texas species, of which he’s photographed 230.

“Whenever there’s been a new species found in the state, I dash out and try to catch up with it,” he says. “I get tips from Facebook or when someone texts me with a sighting.”

Life for dragonflies and damselflies begins in the water, where some species deposit eggs. Others insert eggs into vegetation or rotting wood near water. From the eggs hatch aquatic larvae that look like big-eyed creepy crawlers. After shedding their hard skins in a series of molts, the nymphs emerge from the water and morph into winged adults.

All across Texas, adult odonates fly from spring through fall. Some occur year-round. Most adult damselflies live two to four weeks; dragonflies live four to six weeks. But some odonates survive several months.

They’re best found around freshwater, where they hunt and mate. Large open spaces, such as yards, fields and parking lots, may attract hungry odes in search of winged prey.

On their travels, Reid and Davenport have frequented the Christmas Mountains Oasis, 70 miles south of Alpine in far West Texas. Since 1996, owner Carolyn Ohl-Johnson, a member of Rio Grande Electric Cooperative, has worked to transform 5 acres of her scrubby ranchland into a lush hot-spot for birds, butterflies, and, more recently, dragonflies and damselflies. So far, she has tallied 65 species.

“I remember when Tripp Davenport found a California spreadwing here,” she says. “Since then, I’ve had hundreds of them. People come here specifically to see them and Mexican amberwings.”

In Port O’Connor, on the Gulf Coast, longtime birder Petra Hockey, a member of Victoria Electric Cooperative, mostly taught herself about odonates.

Using her birding skills and Abbott’s field guides, she documented local odonate species. She’s since branched out to photograph dragonflies in the Big Bend, Pineywoods, Rio Grande Valley and other places across Texas. Before a trip, she always researches her destination.

“I learn what dragonfly species are there and what habitats they’re found in,” Hockey says. “What time of the day do they fly? Do they fly high or low? How do they perch? As you get more into dragonflies, you learn how interesting and unique they are.”

That uniqueness fascinates retired teacher Kerry Carloy, who lives north of Dallas in Lewisville and is a CoServ member. He frequents local natural areas in search of dragonflies. “Their intelligent design to me says they weren’t an accident,” he says. “I try to get that point across through my photos.

“They’re interesting because they can maneuver with such agility,” he adds. “They have 360-degree vision, and you can watch them crunch insects up with their teeth.”

Though he’s chased dragonflies around the world, Brian Gooding, a quality engineer who lives in Plano, doesn’t keep a life list.

“Numbers aren’t important to me,” he says. “My challenge is to take the best picture that I can, even if it’s a common species. I’ve used some of my best pictures to help educate people about dragonflies and how cool they are.”

They can also be wise. Gooding recalls the time he watched two male eastern pondhawks fighting over territory at the Colleyville Nature Center northeast of Fort Worth.

“After they were done, they went back to their respective perches and carried on with existing,” he says. “That’s when I realized I need to be more like them and let go of negative stuff in my life. It was a great lesson to learn from a dragonfly.”