On Aug 18, 9:25*am, Conan The Librarian wrote:
On Aug 16, 8:19*pm, Giles wrote:

Everyone knows that birds migrate. *With all the publicity that
Monarch butterflies have gotten in recent years, pretty much everybody
knows about their migrations by now, too, I suppose. *What most people
don't know (largely because most people know virtually nothing about
them.....and don't care), even most people who enjoy various outdoor
activities in more or less wild settings, is that dragonflies migrate
as well. *Well, some of them do; roughly 250 of the roughly 5000 known
species worldwide.

[snip of good stuff about dragonflies]

* *Nice, Wolfgang, thanks. *Funny but I have always been a fan of
dragonflies. *I remember one evening watching dozens of them cavort
outside my window while I was listening to John Coltrane. *Damn things
seemed to be flying in time with the song I was listening to ("Afro-
Blue" from _Live at Birdland_).

I read (or heard) somewhere a long time ago that the one necessary and
sufficient element of music is rhythm. I won't go into a detailed
analysis of that assertion but after thinking about it, it has always
made sense to me. Of course, the world is full of all kinds of rhythm
that most certainly AIN'T music. But, coincidence being the great
fundamental organizing principle of the universe, it comes as no great
surprise that there is sometimes an uncanny overlap. I suspect that
Coltrane never studied Anisoptera, or vice versa.....but there it is.

I love watching them come out when
I've just finished mowing the lawn. *I guess I stir up small bugs as I
mow, and they just come in and clean up.

There's just WAY too much **** to know in this world. There is no way
to catch up. Becky and I have been so absorbed in observing the
dragons that we have never paid much attention to exactly what they
are chasing and eating. On the face of it your observation makes
perfect sense

* *In fact, this last Sunday was the first time I've seen them this
year. *So even as far as it is (in all possible senses) from Texas to
Cheeselandia, the dragons are out here too.

It would be interesting to know which species you're seeing there.
The vast majority of the migrants we've seen here in the past few days
(at least 95%) are the common green darners. Almost all of the rest
are black saddlebags (Tramea lacerata) with only one or a very few of
other species mixed in....some of which may be migratory, others
certainly are not.

* * * Chuck Vance (who calls groups of dragonflies "squadrons" for
self-evident reasons)

Good analogy. I like it.

Becky said the numbers she saw at Wind Point and at the Kenosha Dunes
were mind-boggling.....blots out the sun kind of mind boggling. I,
unfortunately, did not see those kinds of numbers. Yesterday I went
back to Grant Park to rectify that. I saw exactly one dragonfly, a
lone black saddlebags. We don't know how long the migration lasts or
where the bugs go, but we'd recently heard that the duration of the
passage across any point on the Lake Michigan shoreline can last "up
to one week," which suggests that it can also be over a lot quicker.
We bruited two theories about. One was that the bugs had all passed
and that was it for this year. The other was that the overcast skies,
marginally lower temperatures and southerly breezes had put a
temporary halt to the migration. Another trip to Grant Park today
confirmed that the latter theory was correct. They were back in even
greater numbers, and this time they had spread further inland,
covering the golf course and picnic areas in the park in numbers that
beggar the imagination. Naturally, I called Becky. By the time she
arrived, 45 minutes later, there were NO bugs down at the beach. She
was greatly disappointed. But then she found them up on the golf
course, etc. She was relieved, but unimpressed after the numbers she
had seen down in Racine and Kenosha.

Damn! Wish I'd'a been there.

giles