The Yellow-Spotted Dragonfly
Creating habitat for dragonflies and damselflies
This is the ninth post in my series inspired by the species featured in my
2024 calendar, Wildlife of East Otago.
This weekend’s post is brought to you by the letter D, and the colour yellow.
To be clear, we’re talking about the yellow-spotted dragonfly. This dragonfly is an excellent example of why I love my camera - without being able to photograph and zoom in on the details, it would have been much harder to identify the species.
I had whittled it down to one of two Procordulia species, either the ranger dragonfly (P. smithii) or the yellow-spotted dragonfly (P. grayii), both endemic to New Zealand. As you can see in the featured image, this kapowai (dragonfly) definitely has yellow spots on its wings - but had I not re-checked my photo, I would’ve sworn they were black - and probably identified it incorrectly.
I took this photo last November. It was the first time I’d seen a dragonfly close enough to photograph. Even with my somewhat clunky Canon Rebel (their entry level DSLR camera) and second-hand lens, I was able to maneuver around and get several clear photos while it basked in the morning sun.
In Aotearoa New Zealand, we have 14 species1 of dragonfly and damselfly (damselflies tend to be smaller than dragonflies, and have narrower bodies). About half of these are endemic.
We started working on our garden in 2019, but it was only this summer that the dragonfly population really took off. It surprised me, because we’ve had areas of standing water for some time. Combined with our general wildlife gardening habits I had thought we’d see more than just the lonely, occasional visitor.
It was only after watching The Wildlife Garden Project’s episode about dragonfly habitat that I learned dragonfly can live as larvae (nymphs) for anything from two to five years. So not only did we need areas of water, but those areas needed to be undisturbed over several seasons to allow the larvae to survive into dragonfly-hood.
So a small pond is ideal habitat if you’d like to encourage dragonflies2. It also needs to be undisturbed over multiple years, and have some kind substrate (like gravel) for the nymphs to bury into3.
Dragonflies and their nymphs are carnivorous4 so they need a thriving pond ecosystem of invertebrates to hunt - and plenty of plants below the surface to hide in so they can jump out at their prey! Having a few plants that are partially submerged give the nymphs something to crawl up when they are ready to become full-blown dragonflies, and a few floating plants allows the adults to perch, or to lay eggs. They also like basking on rocks or logs.
To summarise, your pond needs to have:
Submerged (25-50% coverage), floating (10-25%), and emergent plants (5%).5
Lots of life, so no pesticides.
Rocks, logs, and plants around it.
To be undisturbed.
If you’d like some more detailed information on wildlife ponds, I highly recommend Backyard Ponds from The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation.
Happy pond-building!
Zenobia
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https://aucklanduniversitypress.co.nz/content/1907-Sample-DragonfliesAndDamselflies.pdf
https://www.visitzealandia.com/Whats-On/ArtMID/1150/ArticleID/261/Encouraging-dragonflies-with-freshwater-ponds
https://xerces.org/sites/default/files/2018-05/14-010_01_Pond_Habitat_Guidelines_Odonates_Final_Websec.pdf
https://www.thoughtco.com/what-do-dragonflies-eat-1968250
https://xerces.org/sites/default/files/2018-05/14-010_01_Pond_Habitat_Guidelines_Odonates_Final_Websec.pdf