home

Enallagma cyathigerum - Common Blue Damsel

Phylum: Arthropoda - Class: Insecta - Order: Odonata - Family: Coenagriidae

Common blue damsel, male

This is the damselfly that is seen most often on lakes and ponds in summer. The male, shown above, fully justifies the adjective 'blue'.

Common Blue damselfly, female

In contrast the female ( pictured above) is a less conspicuous insects with blackish body colouring.

Common blue damsel, Wales UK

Mating damselflies form what is often referred to as a 'damsel wheel. Paired damselflies can be seen flitting over the water surface and then settling on a floating plant leaf so that the female can dip her oviposotor into the water, attaching eggs to the edge of the leaf.

Common blue damsel, female, southern France

Above: a female Common Blue damselfly, southern France

Acknowledgements

This page includes pictures kindly contributed by Simon Harding.


Excited at the prospect of flyfishing? So are we, and we're pretty sure you would find the Winding River Mystery trilogy of action-packed thrillers gripping reading too. Dead Drift, Dead Cert, and Dead End are Pat O'Reilly's latest river-and-flyfishing based novels, and now they are available in ebook format. Full details on our website here...

Buy each book for just £4.96 on Amazon...


Please Help Us: If you have found this information interesting and useful, please consider helping to keep First Nature online by making a small donation towards the web hosting and internet costs.

Any donations over and above the essential running costs will help support the conservation work of Plantlife, the Rivers Trust and charitable botanic gardens - as do author royalties and publisher proceeds from books by Pat and Sue.

© 1995 - 2024 First Nature: a not-for-profit volunteer-run resource

Please help to keep this free resource online...

Terms of use - Privacy policy - Disable cookies - Links policy