Blue Skimmer Dragonfly - Orthetrum caledonicum
FAMILY LIBELLULIDAE - Skimmers
This page contains information and pictures about Blue Skimmer Dragonflies that we found in the Brisbane area, Queensland, Australia.
- Male, body length 45mm
The Blue Skimmer Dragonflies are sometimes known as Sky Blue Dragonflies. They are medium in size, body length from 45mm. Their bodies are long and slender, male adults are powder blue in colour with tapered dark abdomen tip.
- Female, body length 45mm
- Female are brownish grey in colour. Their wings are clear with brown colour near the wing tip. When they are at rest, the dragonflies held out theirs wings horizontally, sometime they hold their wings below their body.
- Larval exuviae, 30mm
- The larva uses its tail to breath in water. Just before the last molting, the larva climb up from the water and emerge from the last molting skin as an adult. The larva is a predator in water preying on small animals such as mosquitoes larva. The adult is a predator in the sky and preying on flying insects.
- Immature male
- Immature male is black and yellow in colour, with patterned drab yellow thorax. Its body will turn to light powder blue when maturing.
- Mature male
- Mating pair
- The Blue Skimmer Dragonflies are common in Brisbane. They can be found in almost every ponds and slow running creeks. They fly among the low vegetation over the pond and usually return to the same spots after a short flight. We took those pictures near the ponds along Bulimba Creek and near the pond in Botanic Garden in Mt Coot-Tha in Brisbane.
- In Brisbane there two common species of blue dragonfly. At the left of the above picture is the Blue Scarlet, with similar colour and size as the Blue Skimmer at the right. They can be found at the same location. They can be distinguished by the dark thorax and wider abdomen of Blue Scarlet. In both species the female are in brownish yellow colour, the Blue Scarlet female has the black line at the middle of the boarder abdomen.
- The Dragonflies have their very good eye sight, still, sometimes they are get caught in a spider web. The about picture shows a male Blue Skimmer in the spider web.
