mora-borium

I know I said the museum was not accepting specimens due to my impending departure, but it turns out the lifestyle I've designed for myself as a hunter is too deep in my blood to obey the bureaucracy.  I broke the code; I captured a handful of dflies since I wrote about the moratorium.  I'm sorry but I will not apologize for this.

In the post describing the stoppage of specimen acquisition I forgot to mention a caveat stating "rare and unprecedented specimens will be admitted."  This was a standard clause I asked my lawyers to tell me to put in the blog even though I didn't intend to use it (I figured I'd be too busy getting ready for the move to hunt).  However, I have admitted multiple specimens and not all the specimens I have recently brought to the museum have fallen under either exceptional category.  Another dictum of recalcitrance...

ecstatic beginnings

The time has come here in Northeast Tarrant County!!  As mentioned in my previous two postings (which in extreme excitement I sent from my phone), specific Zygopterans and Epithecans have taken to the air at the Colleyville Nature Center.

I began my walk this morning with hopes of seeing some dragonflies but I made sure not to get too excited, as my fragile personality easily becomes fragmented.  Walking by sections of the park I recalled years past and dragonflies the dragonflies of yore...could today be the day??  ...No, Brian, calm down, be patient.  I say this to myself a lot.  So I kept sauntering along, enjoying the sights of many other insects that I haven't seen in a while.  I saw a six-spotted tiger beetle (species Cincindela sexguttata) along my way to the pond's edge, as well as some butterflies or moths (who cares...order Lepidoptera) and midges (suborder Nemotocera).  The midges got me excited--midges are aquatic insects just like dragonflies.  In fact, midges often fall prey to the mandibles of our beloved dragonflies.  If only...

I think you can tell where this is headed.  If not, you're retarded, because I already told you in the first paragraph.

what's Latin for tragedy...

Just kidding, I don't care.  Natural selection takes care of a lot of our dragonfly friends, as seen in the following photographs.  Sometimes I wish I would've been disposed of earlier by nature, however, I was born in the 20th century with a lion roaring in the background.  Anyway, someone's loss is our benefit, and these pictures will help us bridge the gap between the very brief period in which a dragonfly lives underwater and in which it takes to the air.

Uh oh...complications emerging!!

Epitheca princeps

The prince baskettail (Epitheca princeps) has always been a very enchanting dragonfly to me.  When I first began collecting, this species seemed so majestic and elusive.  Massive green eyes (when living) and an abdomen that curls upward and outward like the letter "j" when this dragonfly is hanging from a tree branch, I hardly ever saw them anywhere within reach; they were always jetting high overhead and pinching insects from the air or patrolling territories of water, towering above of the other species.

A dorsal scan of an Epitheca princeps from the CDM.

new season ahead

Here is a photo from last year, a reminder of what is coming in 2011.  Species of the genus Epitheca are usually the first dragonflies to start showing up around here.  They generally begin emerging in mid-March and persist maybe through August.

This fine specimen, an unidentified baskettail (Epitheca sp.), was placed in a vial of acetone moments after capture.  Usually when we immediately immerse a specimen in the field it is so the specimen won't damage itself, or to preserve its ephemeral developmental state.