The swarming activity picked up a little this week, though perhaps not quite as much as I’d hoped.  Swarms occurred in the following locations:

USA:

Mystic, CT
Apopka, FL
Cape San Blas, FL
Destin, FL
Gulf Breeze, FL
Santa Rosa Beach, FL
McLeansboro, IL
Hoboken, NJ
Lawrenceville, NJ
North Arlington, NJ
Hastings-On-Hudson, NY
Lumberton, NC
Ocean Isle Beach, NC
Raleigh, NC (3 reports)
Cedar Park, TX
Kyle, TX
Kenosha, WI

There’s a strange distribution of swarms this week.  About half of them are in the northeast (New York and New Jersey) and the other half are in the southeast (North Carolina and Florida).  It’s a little odd that there’s nothing in between, but at this point I’m giving up trying to explain what’s going on until the season’s completely over.  Maybe I’ll have a better idea of why the end of the season is so strange if I can look at the whole season.  Or maybe not!  Guess we’ll have to see.

While there seems to be little activity happening in most of the rest of the country, the field station where I work, Prairie Ridge, has been quite the hotbed of dragonfly activity!  Between my coworkers and me, we’ve seen 7 swarms on the grounds over the past two weeks.  The last few days have been especially exciting.  Right around 4:30 or 5pm everyday, we’ve been seeing groups of dragonflies flying over the prairie.  They’re green darners mostly, though tonight there were some black saddlebags mixed in too.  The dragonflies fly from about 4 feet to 20 feet in the air, swooping back and forth over the grass.  I get a thrill from each and every swarm I see, but these swarms have been especially thrilling: immediately above the area where the dragonflies have been flying are chimney swifts, 100 or more.  Many people have told me about swallows flying above the dragonfly swarms they’ve seen – it happens often.  However, chimney swifts are not commonly reported.  It is really something to look out toward the sun in the distance and see big swarms of both dragonflies and chimney swifts!  I hope they’re eating all the mosquitoes that keep biting me.  :)

Please keep reporting swarms if you see them.  The season normally ends in a couple of weeks, so it will be interesting to see how this very strange season plays out!

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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!