Rayetta's Dragonflies

If it aint one thing, it's two. Yes. While wandering around the CB keeping track of my butterflies I noticed lots of dragonflies, too. Why are all these dragonflies hanging around?, I wondered. Could it be all the tiny blood-sucking dipterans hovering in the east pasture have attracted them? I certainly hope it is the blood-sucking dipterans they are after. That bunch needs thinning out.

The blood-sucking dipterans notwithstanding, lots of dragonflies at the CB seems surpassingly odd to me. There is, typically, no permanent standing water in close proximity to the CB. Yet I noticed crowds of dragonflies about even during the previous several miserable Beelzebubberriffics when there was never any standing water, even ephemerally. There may be more dragongflies this year than in previous years though. However, I have no way of determining that, since DY 1 is the first year I have paid them much mind.

So far, I have managed to identify, photographically, eleven different species of dragonflies habitating at the CB. That seems a very large number of species considering the small size and upland character of the available habitat. I am very surprised, indeed. No. I am not merely surprised. I am shocked.

Is eleven species per acre of upland habitat in these parts, normal? Plus, not only are there at least eleven species, there are lots and lots of individuals around at every nonce. (Lots and lots figures to sum up somewhere between a baker's dozen and a tousand or maybe two tousand).