My article on Furtive Forktails, Ischnura prognata, is being published in the Argia! It will be in the next issue (which I believe is March 2023). I’m so thrilled I can hardly type this. The Argia is a publication produced by the Dragonfly Society of the Americas and if you are at all interested in dragonflies or damselflies or both, I heartily recommend joining. There is a blog that often has really useful species information as well as a quarterly news journal called the Argia and a peer-reviewed professional journal called the Bulletin of American Odonatology (BAO).
If you go to their publications page there are actually free issues (older issues) as well as those only available to members, so you can see what the publications are. I find them incredibly useful and extremely well-written and enjoyable even to non-professionals like myself. I’m actually considering a lifetime membership because their publications are so useful. The most recent Argia journals starting with volume 32 issue 3 (published in 2020) have been featuring articles on identifying nymphs and form some of the best and most helpful information available on this tricky subject. I’ve been reading them just because they are interesting, even though I don’t really have any hopes of ever trying to identify nymphs.
The article I wrote is entitled: “Common Where Found: Furtive Forktail, Ischnura prognata, Observations”. I basically wrote about the Furtive Forktails that I had observed over the summer of 2022 in the swamp behind our house. There were dozens of them, and I was fascinated by their behavior.
One thing I noted was that as they hunted for prey, they would tap the upper side of a curved blade of grass to disturb/dislodge any creatures resting on the underside. This year (2023) I’ve watched not only the Furtive Forktails, but also Fragile Forktails, I. posita, and Citrine Forktails, I. hastata, doing the same thing. And I finally watched (instead of trying to take photos and missing all the action) as a few of these small damselflies dislodged mosquitoes this way, caught them, and subsequently had a fine dining experience. So that technique does seem to work for them.
The Fragile Forktails, Citrine Forktails, and Furtive Forktails are already out in the swamp on sunny days when the temperature is around 70 F degrees and the hardy little Fragile Forktails are out even at much lower temperatures down into the 50’s F. They are all trying to contend with the loads of pollen everywhere, and I constantly see them perched on a slender twig, grooming their big eyes to get rid of pollen particles.
In the photo above, the fine white dust-like substance is pollen. You can see pollen on the blade of grass as well as caught by a strand of a spider’s web beneath the grass. (You’ll be relieved to know that this Fragile Forktail was not captured by the spider’s web and flew off shortly after I took this photo. Or maybe not if you hoped the spider–not in the photo–would catch its dinner…)
The Furtive Forktail in the photo above had double trouble: he was dealing with pollen and he’d been caught in a web. He was thrashing around and managed to extricate himself from the web and flew away unscathed. (Leaving behind another hungry spider…)
This lovely lass was also dealing with pollen, as can be seen on her thorax. For some reason, a male Fragile Forktail kept harassing her, but she eventually drove him away. Their interaction allowed me to see the size differential between the two damselflies: the Furtive Forktail was much longer than the Fragile and her length made her appear more delicate.
I wanted to include this immature female Citrine Forktail near the immature female Furtive Forktail to allow for comparisons. At first glance, they look a lot alike. The Citrine is much smaller, however. The following is a side-by-side comparison with some additional pointers below.
In general the immature Citrine female has more segments that are orange and tends to be more red-orange. In the photo on the left, the Citrine has orange on S1 through S5 with black starting at the end of the S5 segment. The dark dorsal stripe on her thorax is fairly wide, as well.
In the photo on the right, the Furtive has orange only on S1 through S3, so her abdomen has much more black on it. Her dark dorsal stripe on the thorax is thin. (There are some reddish immature Furtives as well, but they also have more black abdomen segments like the one above than the Citrine normally has).
And then there is the size difference, but that’s hard to tell unless you see them side-by-side or have captured them and perform measurements.
Spring is coming fast, and I have high hopes of seeing more damselflies and dragonflies, as well as birds.
Oh, I nearly forgot, I think a pair of White-breasted Nuthatches is thinking about nesting in one of the boxes we put up at the edge of the woods. I saw one checking the box out yesterday so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
