Bluetail

Common Bluetail (Ischnura elegans)

Our new pond is certainly attracting lots of attention these days! When I checked it yesterday afternoon, I found a quartet of visiting odonates, including our regular male Broad-bodied Chaser, a couple of Large Red Damsels, three Azure Bluets, and this Common Bluetail (Ischnura elegans), which is a new one for the garden. This is one of Europe's most widespread and well-known damselflies, found right across the continent (and the British Isles), except for much of the Iberian Peninsula and northern Scandinavia. Elsewhere, its range stretches across Asia to Japan. The dark body with its sky blue "tail light" (as the Field Guide to the Dragonflies of Britain and Europe calls it) is distinctive among the UK's damselflies. Only the Scarce Blue-tailed Damsel shares this pattern, but its blue spot is one segment further down its abdomen. This is probably an immature male; though his eye spots and "tail light" are bright blue, the stripes on his thorax are still quite green. (You'll need to click on the picture to enlarge it enough to see that.) Females come in a variety of colours. They can be very like the males (though with a lilac-coloured rather than green thorax when they're immature), as well as brownish, pinkish or dull green. Like other damsels, they're regularly found around water. Common Bluetails, however, prefer standing water; they're regular at garden ponds and can tolerate polluted and nutrient-rich water sources. They fly from late April through late September, with a single generation per year. Hopefully, we'll be seeing them for a while now.