Pipilachas in the Garden~

Pipilachas (or dragonflies) have discovered the little pond Alan and I installed over the Christmas holiday. They tracked it down it the minute the hole was lined with plastic and we filled it with water. Our first (visible) inhabitants.

We discovered, quite by accident, that a large red pipilacha likes to stand guard over the pond. He established his outpost on a piece of string Alan used to tie up some transplanted lemon grass at the pond’s edge. We thought nothing of it, but when Alan removed the string, the dragonfly had no comfortable landing strip anymore. He used the lemon grass for a bit but it swung about in the breeze and wasn’t satisfactory. He finally settled on the tips of a very large agave plant. It was further away from the pond, though, so he had to fly out on reconnaissance flights more often.

This morning, as we sat on the porch having our morning tea, Alan said, “There! See, he’s landing on it.”

Earlier, Alan had placed a bit of wire for him. It looks quite Japanese in its simplicity and form, and the pipilacha seems taken with it and now uses it regularly.

So this morning, with camera in hand, I crept as stealthily as I could to catch a photo while he rested on his perch.

No chance of that.

Dragonflies have been around for millions of years. According to The British Dragonfly Society, they predate dinosaurs by 150 million years. So they are survivalists in the most Darwinian of ways. They have adapted themselves to their environment and, as a result, still live and reproduce much as they did millions of years ago. One of these skills is their eyesight.

Again, according to the British Dragonfly Society, “Dragonflies are visual hunters and have impressive vision being able to see in color as well as ultraviolet light and polarized light, which enables them to see reflections of light on water. Their large compound eyes are made up of as many as 30,000 facets or lenses.”

That’s 29,999 more than you or I have. Consequently, I was no match when it came to outmaneuvering him. I didn’t get any closer than three feet and he was off and away, wheeling up over my head. I sat quietly on a rock by the pond and could hear his papery wings buzzing overhead. I remained as motionless as I could, and soon he became calmer, lighting briefly on his wire outlook. On one of his forays out I turned on the camera, focused it, and waited, sure the battery would go dead– or the thing would shut off automatically. But it didn’t and, ultimately, I was able to get these pictures of him.

I don’t know how long he will be around. I read that the average life expectancy of adult dragonflies depends on the part of the world they live in. In temperate climates, according to a Beginners Guide to Dragonflies, the largest portion of the dragonfly’s lifetime, which may amount to several years, is spent in the larval phase while the adult phase is only one or two months. In species common to the tropics or subtropics, however, larval development may be reduced to a few months and the adult phase as long as a full year. So that’s nice.And the best part is, both larvae and adults devour mosquitoes. Maybe he will be with us for awhile. Not like those butterflies of ours. They are gone before you can say… PIPILACHA!.