CITRINE FORKTAIL and vesper bluet
Citrine Forktail. This is one of our smallest damselflies. It is easy to overlook these tiny forktails due to their small size. I probably would never notice them at all, were it not for their bright colors!
Citrine Forktail, lurking in the grass. These forktails live in wet prairies and at the vegetated edges of shallow ponds. They fly from April through October. In some years, this species is not hard to find, but they can be scarce in dry years when their shallow, temporary pools dry up.
Vesper Bluet. This is a gorgeous damselfly, with a unique combination of a neon yellow thorax and blue abdomen tip. This species flies late in the afternoon and evening, and even well after dusk.
Spring Lakes Park in Bellbrook has a good population of Vesper Bluets. I had hunted odonates at that location for several years, but I never saw Vesper Bluets until the fall of 2017. It is likely that I was just missing them because I am usually not looking for odes late in the evening.
Vesper Bluet, floating contentedly on a leaf. This species prefers to rest on lilypads, when lilypads are available. But there are no lilypads at Spring Lakes Park, so the Vespers there make do with leaves and other vegetation.
This is a female Citrine Forktail, found at Oakes Quarry. Younger females are mostly orange. Older ones can turn very dark and nearly solid black.
I usually see Vesper Bluets in the fall months, but they also fly during the summer. I probably encounter them more often in autumn because it gets darker earlier in the evenings, which means I can find them earlier in the afternoon. My latest sighting is October 22nd.
Oakes Quarry has a good population of Citrine Forktails. Cox Arboretum and Grant Park also have good populations, but their numbers vary widely from one year to the next.
