Teneral Blue Dasher

Blue Dasher dragonflies are common as dirt around here, and they just might be our most abundant species, with Pondhawks a very close second. Those were among the first two I ever learned, and even though I spot them on almost every trip I make to the millpond and the local meadows, from last May until about the beginning of fall, I still pay those odonates close attention. 'Cause you never know... and what I assume is a Dasher might turn out to be something else. So it was with this guy. I found him working the grasses in the meadow across the street, and though I knew he was a Dasher, he looked odd. A scan of the photographs I was able to take—he was a very cooperative model—revealed why. Many dragonflies have an adolescent form—biologists refer to this as the "teneral" aspect—that mostly resembles a female's coloration. You can see this in the upper part of the abdomen and the thorax, which both bear the characteristic striping pattern of a newly emerged Dasher. This guy is in the process of ditching the adolescent coloration for that of a proper blue male. I managed to capture the process in mid-course: an uncommon image of a commoner.