Dragonhunter I don't know if the sleep of dragonflies is ever bothered by dark dreams—actually, I don't know if dragonflies actually sleep—but if untoward thoughts ever trouble their invertebrate brains, horrid images of Hagenius brevistylus must rank high on their end-of-the-world list. The Dragonhunter is a large, wide-bodied odonate whose chief prey is every dragonfly species smaller than its nearly three-and-a-half inch long body. The nimble flier also snags butterflies and moths, and anything else it can pluck from mid-air. It belongs to the clubtail group of odonates, which bear a strange, seemingly unaerodynamic club at the end of their abdomens. The Dragonhunter is one of the most colorful of the group, with bold, yellow racing stripes on its thorax. It also sports green eyes that, like all the members of the clubtails, are separated from each other—in many dragonfly species, the eyes meet—and an almost clown-like mouth. But no funny business here! I hadn't seen dragonhunters yet this year, but today, in the same spot I saw them last year, there they were. This one was incredibly cooperative and let me get so close with my telephoto that I had to back off a little to focus.