The Natural History of Bodega Head

    Air temperatures reached the mid-high 50's today, but the afternoon sun was warm enough to activate this dragonfly.  It zipped into ...

    Nice to see a Black Saddlebags ( Tramea lacerata ) over our backyard this afternoon (8 June 2025).  

    Small swarms of these dragonflies have been visible for several days now, but I've mostly seen them zipping around, chasing small in...

    I was away at a meeting this week, but Eric was in Bodega Bay and observed a significant movement of dragonflies (and some butterflies) ...

    Carolina Saddlebags ( Tramea carolina ) photographed in Chatham, Massachusetts on 20 September 2023.

    Arriving at the coast in the early afternoon, Eric spotted a number of dragonflies cruising back and forth along a dune ridge.  I went b...

    There were record-breaking high air temperatures for this date (18 January 2021).  I'm seeing slightly different numbers from severa...

We're having trouble accessing the Internet tonight, but I'm going to try to post a few quick dragonfly shots from this afternoon (2...

  A nice female Flame Skimmer ( Libellula saturata ) paused briefly in our backyard this evening. Here's a close-up view of the...

  We were getting ready to do some grilling in the backyard tonight when Eric looked up to see a dragonfly cruising around overhead.  T...

  With the heat, come the dragons.  It was warm today (15 August 2019).  At the coast, air temperatures reached ~71°F (~22 ° C).  With ...

What a nice welcome to Massachusetts!  This is one of my favorite groups of dragonflies.  A beautiful Clamp-tipped Emerald ( Somatochlora te...

Sometimes we find dragonflies washed up on the beach, but last night I was surprised by this one:   This wasn't a species I had s...

Well, this feels a little strange.  I started learning about dragonflies in New England in the early 1990s.  But I've been living in Cal...

I knew it as soon as I started walking along the trail. The weather was just right for dragonflies on Bodega Head today — warm and sunny wi...

  In mid-August, I wrote about seeing my first Western Pondhawk ( Erythemis collocata ) on Bodega Head.  (I took a distant photo of a fe...

  This might be tough, but can you guess where this photograph of a Common Green Darner ( Anax junius ) was taken? Here's a mor...

Today I set my personal record for the greatest number of dragonfly species seen on Bodega Head in one day. Remember that Bodega Head isn...