You're not gettin' off that easy! I sense a story in there somewhere! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> Out with it!

They get on and in everything, especially if it's moist. Keep those hulls dry!! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

I was camped out near the Everglades one night when I was awakened by the sound of two mosquitos nearby.

Mosquito #1: "Should we eat them here or take them back to the swamp?"
Mosquito #2: "Eat them here! If we take them to the swamp the big ones will just steal them away from us."

We don’t really have a bug problem here but we do have a lot of dragon flies. I don’t mind though because they are harmless and quite beautiful. The ones here come in strikingly bright colors they look like flying crayola crayons.

I put a lily pond in back, just for that reason.

I love Dragonflies!
They eat mosquitoes (gotta love that) and do not bite or sting humans. Did you know they live to be about six or seven years old? (ancient for an insect) They are also the worlds fastest insect. They can fly 60 miles per hour. (97 km/h) Not to mention, they are beautiful.

Unfortunately Wendy, your beautiful dragonflies DO have a very short life expectancy! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

This extract from the FAQ page of the British Dragonfly Society:

"At the shortest, a dragonfly's life-cycle from egg to death of adult is about 6 months. Some of the larger dragonflies take 6 or 7 years! Most of this time is spent in the larval form, beneath the water surface, catching other invertebrates. The small damselflies live for a couple of weeks as free-flying adults. The larger dragonflies can live for 4 months in their flying stage. In Britain, lucky Damsels seldom go more than two weeks and Dragons more than two months. Most Damsels rarely go more than a week, and Dragons two or three weeks. They die from accidents and predation, and large numbers from starvation - in poor weather neither they nor their prey can fly.

So, you see, the vast majority of their lives they aren't the beautiful fly that you so admire.........

Pete, it's a good thing your lily pond attracts dragonflies, because it sounds like a perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />

True enough, but that larval stage has a voracious appetite for larval mosquitoes! Also, I've seined up some common ditch minnows (no idea what their proper names are), there are NO mosquitoes in my lily pond!

Just out of curiosity, is it necessary to have waterlilies in the pond in order to attract dragonflies to lay their eggs in the pond? How does that work?

It helps to have lilies. The dragon flies glue their eggs to the underside of the lily pads. You would need some type of plant material to hold the eggs until hatching.


The biggest problem I have is encroachment. The dragon flies prefer open space, without spider webs to get caught in. I've culitvated a dense "rain forest" type environment, which I modeled after the Marie Selby Garden in Sarasota. My wife prefers to call it the "vacant lot" or weed infested "no maintenance" environment. She is not a nature lover. She was particularly disenchanted with the water snake who took up residence a few years back.

Also, you should never name the goldfish as herons and raccoons find them very tastey.

Well, thanks for peeing in my Wheaties there John. *JK*

I still love anything that eats mosquitoes even if it is larvae. I think I must be the mosquitoes favorite meal. I had some friends that used to joke that they only asked me to go camping with them so the mosquitoes would leave them alone.

And the adults are beautiful.

Mosquitoes!!!? <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Dragonflies must look different in different places. When we had Rick's Place, at a certain of the year we had hundreds of dragonflies zooming around eating mosquitoes, which was good. But the dragonflies certainly weren't beautiful, or even pretty. Just some drab color.

At first it was intimidating to me to walk through the open areas where they were zooming, because I was afraid they were going to run into me. But they seem to have very good reflexes and always manage to avoid large moving objects like people.

After I found out that what they were doing was eating mosquitoes, I was as happy to see the dragonflies as the mosquito plane and the mosquito trucks. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

Lots of differen dragon flys:
http://www.dragonfly-site.com/dragonfly-pictures.html


http://stephenville.tamu.edu/~fmitchel/dragonfly/index.html

better photos here:

http://www.ups.edu/x6267.xml

Biting Greenhead flies:

Expose your teeth
Lick your lips
Grasp the fly by the green head and by the tail
Stretch the green head away from the shoulder of the wings

Good advice! But I have questions:
Is the fly already deceased when you do this?
Do you swallow the head of the fly after biting it off?
If the fly is alive when you decapitate it, can you describe your capture technique?

Has no one else here experienced the charming yellowfly?
Humorous yellowfly story

There are days around here with no-see-ums in the morning, yellowflies in the afternoon and mosquitos at night.

Stump-knockers and warmouths. You had to grow up down here to understand.

My sister was sitting on an Oak root at Fish Eating Creek, trying to put a few warmouths in the bucket, when an otter came out of a hole and dispossessed her from that root!

Years later my nephews scattered her ashes in the creek.