Wow, last week was a bear!  Between the conference last weekend, prepping for BugFest yesterday, and back to back responsibilities at work all week, I had next to no free time.  That meant I had zero time to blog, which is unfortunate considering the week of September 8th was the biggest week of swarms to date! You’re going to have to wait until tomorrow to see the data for that big week, however, as it’s taking forever to process the information and get it uploaded. I’m admitting to myself that I’m not going to finish tonight! Still, I want to bring you SOMETHING this week, so here are the swarms that occurred over the past seven days:

USA:

Chico, CA
Navarre, FL
Vicksburg, MS
Greenlawn, NY
Swannanoa, NC
Culloden, WV

And here’s the map:

Red pins are static swarms, blue pins are migratory. Click the map to enlarge!

Compared to the last two weeks, this was a slowwwww week!  Only 6 swarms reported nationwide, which is practically nothing. The swarms also appeared to be rather randomly distributed, with no obvious pattern to their locations.  

After the last two weeks, this week’s showing seems disappointing, but it is getting to be the right time of year for the end of the dragonfly season.  I don’t know about the rest of the country, but it’s cooled down a lot in my part of the North Carolina over the last few days and the dragonflies have all but disappeared with the arrival of the fall-like weather. I suspect similar things are happening in many other locations as well.

What an odd year!  The dragonfly season was very slow to begin, then everything swarm-related happened in one little flurry of activity over about 2 1/2 weeks.  Now it looks like we’re already at the end of the season.  Very strange!  But that’s part of what makes science interesting, the unpredictability of it all and new discoveries around every turn.

If you see a swarm, I hope you’ll report it!  We’re heading into the fall and the activity will likely remain low over the next few weeks before it peters out completely, but I’d love to see a few more late-season swarms reported.  Let me know if you see one!

_______________

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!

_______________

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

_______________