Skimming Bluet, Bell CedarSkimming Bluet

If I'm ever to get good at the identification business, I'm going to have to get into serious collecting and never leave home without an insect net and various sized jars, one of them filled with insect killing material. My reliance on photography will, I've long realized, only get me half-way there, and that percentage might be overly optimistic. Then again, maybe that's good enough for my purposes... to say nothing of my age, which, I'm also realizing, is not at a point where I have the luxury of lots of time. And sometimes a picture is enough. Case in point: damselflies are often very hard to ID, particularly the Bluet group, of which this fellow is an example. However, when I examined what turned out to be a tack-sharp image that I took at just the right angle, I was able to work some taxonomic magic. The key turns out to be that wavy line at the bottom of the first abdominal segments. That adornment, coupled with the tear-shaped post-ocular spots, the blue at the near-end of the tail, and the blue shoulder stripe pattern signal Skimming Bluet. It's a modest success, but I'll take it.