Wow, a record for me. Three days in a row at the Yamato Scrub! My older son, Eric, surprised me midmorning on Labor Day by suggesting that we go to Yamato Scrub. I seized on the suggestion, and off we went. I brought snacks and a drink to keep him occupied, and it worked! I was able to install him on a bench with a good view of the pond while I wandered off to take a few more pictures of the insect life around the wetlands, and found some new (to me) creatures and behaviors. It wasn’t long before he grew hot and bored and “suggested” that we head home, but when a place is this teeming with life, it doesn’t take long to get some pictures of it, either.
One of the more common insects around the pond at this time of year is a tiger beetle; I’m not entirely sure which one it is, but I believe it to be the punctured tiger beetle, Cicindelidia punctulata. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of them flying around from spot to spot around the sandy margins of the wetlands, so if I get back there anytime soon I’ll be sure to take more photos to get the ID. Here’s the one shot from this trip that sort of turned out:
While not as showy as other tiger beetles (seriously, do an image search on tiger beetles and you’ll see some amazing walking jewelry), it has a certain charm in the metallic sheen from its hard wing covers (elytra). Tiger beetles, true to their name, are predaceous, using their impressive speed, large eyes, and hefty mandibles to attack and consume their prey. I haven’t seen them catching or eating anything, but by all accounts, it’s impressive.
However, and as sort of a follow-up to yesterday’s post that featured a damsels in distress (that is, a damselfly eating another damselfly), today’s post features a truly impressive feat of predation: a dragonfly, Eastern Pondhawk (Erythemis simplicicollis) feasting on another dragonfly, Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis):
It was a bit windy, and I couldn’t get as close to the subjects as I’d have liked, so the picture’s a bit blurry, but it’s pretty easy to see what’s going on here. Like any good predator, the pondhawk here is feasting on the tastiest bits of its captured prey first—in this case, the face and brains.
The dragonfly that’s being eaten is a bit blurry in the shot above, so here’s a shot of one of its brethren (who knows? maybe it’s the exact same animal, as I didn’t follow this one after I’d photographed it) displaying the same markings on its tail (what dragonfly people call its “abdomen”) and thorax (that part of the insect where the four wings and six legs attach):
Come on out to the Yamato Scrub if you want to see some amazing examples of nature, “red in tooth and claw.” Because, unlike on the maps of antiquity or the Renaissance, here indeed, there be dragons. (Well, dragonflies, at any rate.) And tigers. (Well, tiger beetles.)
Etymological note: the genus of the tiger beetle pictured at top (Cicindelidia) appear to be derive its name from the latin word for glow-worm, cicindela. (There are two North American genera with similar names, Cicindela and Cicindelidia; presumably they are named so similarly because they are suspected to be closely related.) Tiger beetles do have a bit of a metallic sheen to them, which might account for the genus name, but I really have no idea…