Looks like we might be hitting a bit of a lull before the explosion of activity during the migration when it starts in a few weeks.  Not quite as many swarms this week:

USA:

Grove Hill, AL
Young, AZ
Arkadelphia, AR
Norwich, CT
Tolland, CT
Naples, ID
Evanston, IL
Orland Park, IL
Richmond, IN
Farmington, ME
Gooserocks Beach, ME (2 reports)
Skowhegan, ME
South Bristol ME
Silver Spring, MD
Westminster, MA
Villa Ridge, MO (2 reports)
Hollis, NH
Lebanon, NH
Londonderry, NH
Tilton, NH
Glen Falls, NY
Saratoga Springs, NY
Tulsa, OK (2 reports)
Westerly, RI
Franklin, TN
Coventry, VT
Hartland, VT
Alexandria, VA
Seattle, WA

There’s still a fair amount of activity in New England, especially in the northern part of the region, but the swarms are spread over a pretty large area this week.   Interesting!  I love watching how these swarms move from place to place from week to week and they definitely seem to be going strong in the northern part of the country at the moment.

I got to see another swarm this week too!  I helped out with a dragonfly and damselfly workshop for teachers offered by the outreach people at my museum (an awesome group of enthusiastic educators, so I was thrilled to be even a limited part of it!) at Weymouth Woods-Sandhill Nature Preserve.  Half of the day was spent indoors learning about dragonflies and damselflies and then the afternoon was spent at a nearby fish hatchery observing dragonflies in the field.  I was asked to talk about my swarm project briefly and had told everyone that it was uncommon to see them and that they shouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t ever see one.  Imagine my delight when we came around the corner at the fish hatchery and saw a swarm right there over the grass!  It was lovely, and very exciting.  I tried to take some photos and reinforced for myself just how hard it is to photograph these things:

Yikes!  I couldn’t get more than a few dragonflies in the frame at one time and this was the best I could do.  Someday I’m going to get a really good shot of this behavior.  Someday…

And finally, the Your Wild Life blog included my project in a blog post about the Public Participation in Scientific Research conference last weekend.  Thank you to Holly Menninger for the support!  And if you all haven’t seen their blog, you should head over there now.  Rob Dunn’s lab is doing some great citizen science and they’re learning some very interesting things about the critters that live on and near us.  They highlight their upcoming and ongoing projects as well as their findings online, so they’re great about sharing their results with their participants.  Great stuff!

Keep looking out for those swarms!

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Have you seen a dragonfly swarm? I am tracking swarms so I can learn more about this interesting behavior.  If you see one, I’d love to hear from you!  Please visit my Report a Dragonfly Swarm page to fill out the official report form.  It only takes a few minutes! Thanks!

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Want more information? Visit my dragonfly swarm information page for my entire collection of posts about dragonfly swarms!

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