Here There Be Dragons

So as some of you know I have moved to South western Oregon. Where I live there are tons of places to go for wildlife photos. I have become fond of taking Dragonfy pics and have been learning more about them. For one, they have remained pretty much unchanged for th last 320 million years. The only real change is their size. They went from having a Two foot wingspan to about a 3 inch wingspan. They are also thought to be the most effcient hunters on the planet with a seccess rate of 90 to 95%. What I am going to post here are photos of the Dragons and I will attempt to name them as best I can. Some maybe repeted only because the females of some of the spieces are hard to tell apart. So here we go....

This one is called a "Blue Dasher" and its a female.

This one is the male.

This one I see often, its a Common Whitetail Dragonfly. It has a wide body compared to the ones above.

Now this one I have a little more info on. This is the Flame Skimmer Dragonfly. From what I could find on YouTube this is only found in Idaho. So I don't know if the guy was nuts or we have had a migration in the lasy 5 years or what... But I like it.

When I went to look this one up it came up as a "Dragonfly" well we already knew that. So I dug a little deeper and it looks like it has a real name. "Blue Dasher".

This guy was the hardest one to get. I had seen one twice but could never get it to land for a photo... Camera shy I guess. But the other day I was able to get shots of three differnt ones. So I give the the Western Pondhawk.

This ones the female Widow Skimmer. I'm hoping to find the male in my photos but it may be out of order...Nope I found it first try. posted below.

The male Widow Skimmer.

As near as I can tell this one is called the "Veriegated Meadowhawk" Below is the male.

This next one is a puzzle...They say its found on the Eastern two-thirds of the US... but as I'm in the far west of the US maybe they got lost????

The Eastern Pondhawk.... I double checked it... Thats what I got.

I just had to add this guy in. Its a "Varible Dancer" a close relitive of the Dragonfly called a Damselfly. Notice the eyes are smaller and more to the side of the head. and they fold their wings instead of spreading them out. Now these things can fly in any direction and cut on a dime. They are found just about anywhere you have fresh water. Considering they have been here for 100 million years before the Dinoaurs and have hardly changed a bit I think they will be around even after we are long gone. I am going to add a few other photos that I liked below, enjoy.