Its been a while. I’ve been derailed into some rather unpleasant personal matters for several years but hopefully I can get this blog back on the tracks one step at a time.

I was driving through southern New Mexico the other day and stopped for a lunch break along a watery ditch. A few darners were flying about so I decided to grab my trusty net, which has laid dormant for several years, and see if I could catch anything.

It didn’t take long before one of the patrolling males flew up over the culvert on which I stood and into my waiting net. I have done very little dragonfly hunting in the west so I could hardly wait to what exciting new species I had caught!

The hypnotic blue eyes tell the tale. It was a blue-eyed darner, Rhionaeschna multicolor.

The male terminal appendages in profile are also diagnostic of the species.

And small differences in the lateral thoracic stripes can also help distinguish it from certain species of darners in the genus Aeshna and the arroyo darner, Rhionaeschna dugesi.

This was not entirely new to me, but was exciting nonetheless. I’ve also collected R. multicolor in the driftless area of southeastern Minnesota, where it is a rare treat at the edge of its range. Or at least it used to be the edge, the species seems to be expanding its range in the upper Midwest.

Hopefully I’ll soon be posting about some new-to-me species in the western US, now that I’ve got that nasty case of blogger’s block out of the way.