Tips for catching dragonflies?

Nature Talk
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My front yard gets dozens of dragonflies patrolling it in the evenings, and I’ve decided to take a literal and metaphorical swing at catching them to photograph, since a lot of them look to be the species that don’t really perch much if at all. I’m having more luck than I expected, but it’s difficult, and I figured I’d come ask for advice in case I’m missing something metaphorical alongside all the literal missing.

I have an aerial net with what I think is a 15” diameter hoop and about 40” of total reach, which feels like a decent size and length. I hold it in two hands, and keep the rim perpendicular to the ground while I’m walking around, so it’s always at the right angle to swing with.
I’ve learned that following individual dragonflies around or generally moving around a lot will sometimes (but not always) make them vacate the area as if noticing that I’m after them, and that slowly walking around the yard in the general direction of where the dragonflies seem to congregate, waiting for them to try to come past me, works better for getting closer. I’ve learned that having a lot of dragonflies in one area seems to make them focus on each other more and pay me less attention, and that they do tend to sooner or later come around to wherever I’m standing.
I’ve also learned that trying to swing from above, below, or one side can help, and that I shouldn’t swing too hard, since I don’t want to hurt one if I hit it with the net rim accidentally. I also know to follow through on the swing’s full arc, not to stop right past the dragonfly, to make sure it winds up deep in the net.
Whenever I think I might have caught one, I always immediately bring the net down to put its rim flat on the ground, so the dragonfly can’t escape- I remember that from catching bugs as a kid. Then I have a mini version of those cylindrical mesh butterfly cages, with the bottom cut out, that I can transfer the dragonfly into by simply putting it over the dragonfly inside the net. That way I don’t have to grab the dragonfly and scare it worse, since animals seem to be more scared by being grabbed than being caught in an inanimate object, and I can point my camera up inside through the hole in the bottom to get a photo. Since dragonflies tend to fly up when captured, the hole at the bottom isn’t much of an escape risk (though I do keep my hand over it when carrying the cage), and I can just unzip the top to let the dragonfly out when I have my photo. So far that’s working reasonably well, though I may need a slightly larger cage for more camera-angling room.

I’m still trying to get my eye in on how far away I can reach with the net, but I imagine that’s a matter of practice. The main thing I’m having trouble with is the really frustrating near misses, where the dragonfly buzzes a few inches above or below the net, meaning that I could have gotten it if I’d swung a bit differently. I have accordingly ordered a net with an 18” rim, since I have to imagine that extra few inches will make it harder for the dragonfly to dodge, even if 18” does seem rather large.
Does anyone have any other tips for, specifically, the dragonflies that don’t ever seem to perch? The ones that do sit still, I’m happy to photograph where they are- it’s the constant fliers I just can’t seem to get pics of. I’m trying to both increase my success rate per swing (I think I’m at about a 5-10% success chance), and give myself more opportunities for a good swing, as I have some chronic health issues that limit how long I can stand outdoors in Texas summer and how many times I can swing a net in a row.

Also, I know some dragonfly species can only be identified by dissection, but for the ones that can be identified alive, what should I make sure to photograph in order to get the best chances of an ID? Is a back/top view with decent magnification adequate, or do some species need a photo of the underside, maybe the face? I’m using a macro lens camera, so I should be able to get lots of detail, though it’s a bit tricky when I’m trying to get pictures as fast as possible in order to let the bug go quickly.

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I am curious if you have been able to identify any of the species in your yard? The fact that you are seeing them in evening swarms suggests they may be feeding. Personally, I find it very difficult to photograph feeding dragonflies in flight. They tend to fly very erratically when they are feeding, even more so than when they are on patrol. Have you tried looking along your treeline or yard vegetation early in the morning? You might find dragonflies roosting then and waiting to warm up in the sun. Or if you see them very late in the evening, there’s a chance you could have some uncommon crepuscular species like shadowdragons or Fawn Darners. Got any rivers nearby? You might want to hang up a white sheet and UV or mercury vapor light, like a moth sheet. Some dragonflies will come to moth lights after dark if you are in the right habitat.

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As far as photos go, usually a lateral shot of the entire dragonfly is the best place to start. The face and end of the abdomen can be useful in some species. It really just depends on the species. If you don’t know what species you have, take as many shots as possible!

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Yeah, I’ve been assuming they’re feeding, as they’ll often do a quick swooping motion that’s presumably them diving at prey. Hopefully they’re eating the mosquitoes.
We’ll have a scattering of them pretty much all day this time of year, and then in the late afternoon they’ll abruptly start to multiply in numbers, with two or three dozen showing up some days. We’re roughly half a mile from a river, so my guess is that they mainly live down there and are coming up here in the evenings to feed over the various open lawns, but I’ll definitely have to try looking along the treeline in case any stay overnight.

I think there might be too much light pollution for moth lights to accomplish much in my immediate area, though I need to remember to check out the front wall of a local drugstore more often, as they get a lot of interesting bugs coming to their lights in particular. I could also check how late the local parks with rivers in them are open and try moth-and-dragonfly lighting there, though I’d need a ton of bug repellent for the mosquitoes.

I’ve only caught four in-flight dragonflies so far, plus this Common Whitetail perched in the backyard last month. Of those four, I’m pretty sure this one is one of the saddlebags, and I’ve taken INat’s suggestion of “Rainpool Gliders” for this one, this one, and this one, as I’m not yet confident in IDing most dragonflies and that looks about right.
Ah, and as I write this comment, they’ve already been IDed as all the same species. I have the beginning of an impression that these particular dragonflies more readily come within net-swinging range- will need to keep an eye out and see if that holds up under further observation.
(I will also be refining my photography skills. I need to remember to be in good lighting, I’m going to have to work out how not to have the shadow of the mesh on them too much, and I think I need a larger cage so I can more easily get photos at a less awkward angle. Really a lot of the problem is that putting the camera inside the cage means it’s hard for me to see the display screen and check if the photo is going to be good, but it’s either that or try to photograph them through the cage, because I don’t want to either restrain them or chill them to photograph them outside the cage.)

Plenty of photos, I can do! I might have trouble getting shots of the faces with how they’re contained, but I can definitely try, and the abdomen is easy enough.

Most of the dragonflies I see are fairly nondescript, brown to reddish-brown with small or no wing markings. I assume a lot of them are females of species with flashy males. There are also some that look like one of the Saddlebag Gliders, and when the numbers get larger there always seem to be one or two that are a sort of light yellowish color. I’ve seen Widow Skimmers in the past, but not this year, though that might just be me missing them when they turn up.
There was an especially interesting one today: a larger dragonfly (though not huge) that looked dark gray or black, but occasionally had a dark blue sheen to it when the light caught it right, with large dark ‘saddlebag’ markings at what looked like the bases of all four wings and a thin band of white about 2/3 of the way down its abdomen. Sadly I didn’t manage to catch it, as it left pretty quickly, either because it could feel the rain coming in and wanted to leave early or because it had realized I was following it in particular. Hopefully it’ll come back, because I don’t see anything that looks quite right when I look through the Central Texas dragonfly observations on INat and I’m curious what it was.

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Stand still in the path they are patrolling and wait for one to approach close enough to swing your net. You will have to be patient, and it will take practice, you will likely miss a lot but will get better with time. Once you get one in your net, flip the bag over the frame to trap the dragonfly, then you can carefully reach in and take it out

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As for the dragonfly you described, that sounds interesting, I am quite familiar with dragonflies in Texas and that doesn’t immediately ring a bell. The checkered setwing (Dythemis fugax, http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/222988647 ) was the first that came to mind, but it is rather small. Does that look like it could have been it?

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As far as ID’ing, I believe all US dragonflies can be identified in the field without dissection, although a few (such as Epitheca and some Somatochlora species and some clubtails) may require close-up photos of the male’s terminal appendages. For most, a top and side view of the dragonfly held in your hand is enough

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Seconding @sethshively here: I don’t know of any North American odes that require dissection. Just good photos. And lots of patience for netting.

What you photograph depends on the species. If you live in an area with lookalikes, you’re going to want clear images of the male’s terminal appendages, preferably both top and side views. You might also have to get photos of the hamules as well for some difficult species. (Ruby and Cherry-faced Meadowhawks, I’m lookin’ at you.) For the females, side view of the ovipositor, and a top view of the prothorax and mesostigmal plate—especially if you’re going to be IDing Damsels as well as Dragons. This is where a clip-on macro lens might come in handy.

You said that you’re in Texas; I highly recommend Dennis Paulson’s Dragonflies and Damselflies of the West. It’s a Princeton Field Guide covering the western half of the US. I’m on my second copy.

Also, if you’re willing to get up at you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-thirty and head over to the river, you can probably find all sorts of dragonflies perched and waiting for the sun. Since they’re effectively cold-blooded, they need that warmth before they get going with their day. Even the big darners will usually find a high spot to soak up some rays. It’s a chance to see them when you don’t have to worry about netting skills so much. As a bonus, if you hit it just right for time and temperature, you get a chance to photograph them covered in dewdrops. :smiley:

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I don’t think that was it? It’s hard for me to be certain about details since I didn’t get any closer than about 10 feet away, but my impression was that the wing patches were large and very dark, something like a female Widow Skimmer’s (though I don’t think the abdomen was broad enough for it to be one), and that the abdomen was more or less the same width all the way down without the narrower section that the setwing there has. It wasn’t enormous, but it was definitely larger than the Spot-winged Gliders around it. And it definitely only had the one marking visible, the single white ring, which is what really caught my attention.

I’ll have to sit by the window today and hope it comes back. Maybe I can catch it, or at least get a not-completely-terrible photo. I’m almost wondering if it might be an unusually pigmented version of something that normally doesn’t look like this, because my Odonata guide (John Abbot’s Dragonflies and Damselflies of Texas and the South-Central United States) doesn’t have anything in the photo section that looks right. Or, do dragonflies have out-of-range ‘vagrants’ appear the way birds do sometimes?

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Very good to know. I have a macro lens camera I’m using, so if I can get the hang of photographing dragonflies inside the cage (or give in and hold the dragonfly in my hand for harder-to-ID species), I should be able to get good enough photos.
Damselflies I’ve actually found easier to photograph, because if you approach a perching one slowly, with the camera held out as far away from your body as possible so only the camera goes near it, they’ll often stay where they are. I have a handful of photos like this one that were taken with the camera just a few inches away from an afternoon I spent sneaking up on damselflies in the local park.

Will definitely check out that guide. I have John Abbot’s guide to dragonflies in the local area, but I have to admit I’m not very keen on it; all the pictures are in the middle of the book, to allow the photos to be printed on glossy paper and the rest of the pages to be regular paper, with the descriptions in a separate section, which means I have to flip back and forth between any likely photo and the description of where it lives and how to differentiate it from other species.

How cold does it need to get overnight for the dragonflies to stay perched for awhile in the morning? That sounds like something I’d be willing to get up early for, but this time of year it only ever drops to about 75-78F (~24-25.5C) overnight, so I might have to save that for spring or fall.

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I don’t catch them, but use a telephoto lens.

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I do have a camera that works well for when they sit still, but getting a photo of a dragonfly that’s darting around my yard, flying erratically and not following any exact pattern, is quite difficult. Let alone trying to get a shot that clearly shows the ovipositor or some other small detail that may help with an ID.

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I typically prefer to photograph them in natural settings, but don’t have the camera equipment to get good in-flight photos, so I try to catch the flyers. Could the dragonfly you saw have been a black saddlebags ( https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/52865?locale=en-US )? This species can have one or more light markings on top of its abdomen, although it doesn’t typically have extensive dark markings in its forewings

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I do like the natural settings also, and I don’t exactly like scaring them by catching them, but my camera will definitely not work even vaguely reliably for in-flight photos. I suspect anything that will would probably cost several thousand dollars, and I have neither the money for that nor the inclination to carry something that expensive around in the field.
(and I have to admit, catching them is fun. With how fast and agile they are, managing to get one is really satisfying)

I’ve just come back in from an hour or so of catching dragonflies, and I did manage to catch something a lot like what I saw yesterday! I didn’t see any with one white marking, but I saw one with two markings, and several with no rings, one of which I caught. Here it is:

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(photo taken after I’d had it held in my hand for close-up pics and then set it on my other hand. It immediately bit me, and then just sat on my hand for a couple minutes before leaving. Odd.)
So it looks like Black Saddlebags is spot-on! Unfortunately my photos didn’t capture the color very well. They’re really quite striking when the light catches them right at a distance, this almost steely blue-black that stands out even from a distance.
I think my initial impression of the forewings as having as much color as the hindwings was wrong, but I will say that some of the ones I saw definitely had more black on the forewings than this, and the one with the rings had white/pale on the sides of the abdomen as well as the top. Distinctly white or something fairly close, not orange. I didn’t see its underside to check if they were actually rings or just U-shapes.

This guy took me awhile to catch. I spent a good hour and a half trying, because there was one in the yard that kept coming down to buzz within netting height very briefly, then going up to patrol 30+ feet in the air, aggressively chasing anything that came within its airspace. I only got this one because a couple more showed up alongside the almost-evening multitude and they were all busy chasing after each other. They seem to be very aggressive about chasing other dragonflies that get in their space.

I also had something odd keep happening. There’s a species I haven’t yet managed to catch that’s yellow and a bit smaller than the others, which flies slower than the other species but avoids me a lot more. The few times one came close enough for me to swing at it, it would dodge the net and then rapidly fly close around me for a couple seconds, almost in arm’s reach, sometimes including a sort of spiraling motion in front of me, before going on about its business.
I’m not sure if this is something that dragonflies are quite smart enough to do, but- is it possible that they were doing that because they were trying to size me up and figure out what I was and what I might do? I imagine that dragonflies, in order to be able to track their prey and be so successful in their hunts, must have a solid ability to predict the actions of other creatures. And I am, after all, another creature, one that was clearly trying to do something in relation to them.

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Are there any flies or mosquitoes flying around you by any chance? Because many times I have had dragonflies “buzz” me to grab deer flies or mosquitoes that were attracted to me.

The one you caught is indeed a black saddlebags, and the yellow ones are most likely wandering gliders (Pantala flavescens). They often fly together with spot-winged gliders and saddlebags

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Sometimes, yeah. Colorado has gotten a couple of oddballs over the last couple of years. The River Jewelwings were odd enough, although they do have a few records from Wyoming. Slaty and Bar-winged Skimmers, though? Waaay out of their usual haunts.

Generally speaking, they can get going once the air temperature hits around 65F, but if you get a night with a relatively high dewpoint, they tend to stay put until it burns off. Meadowhawks and some Skimmers also tend to stay stationary longer than Darners, so even if it doesn’t really cool off, it might still be worth your while.

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After a few years of being frustrated trying to catch adult dragonflies, I learned how to ID the exuviae (some of them, anyway - never the damselflies). Much less frustrating to find, plus they are an indication of larval habitat and easy to take home and ID with a dissecting scope. And just as pretty to my eyes. ;-)

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I definitely had some that looked like they were chasing a bug around me, but I also had some spiral around me at an unusually high speed right after I’d swung the net at them, including a couple that outright circled the net where I still had it in midair.

Wandering gliders look right for a lot of what I was seeing, thank you! Interesting that those species tend to be found together- is it that they like the same habitat and wind up together by chance, or that they actually move around in a multi-species group like birds will do sometimes?

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Funny you say that, because when the weather allows I plan to go and see what odonate nymphs I can find. I’m mainly interested in catching live ones to photograph (and release), but I should remember to gather some exuviae if I can. Do you happen to have any tips on finding the nymphs? I’ve only ever found them incidentally in the past, not hunted for them in particular.

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I haven’t looked for nymphs that much, either, but the easiest ones to find, in my experience are ones that burrow in stream beds. I used dredge nets of various sorts to scoop up sand or silt or leafy debris and sift out everything larger than the mesh size, which left the bigger larvae. For nymphs that live among or under rocks and cobbles, I’d stick the net downstream and turn over the rocks with my feet or hands, so the larvae would drift into the net. I wasn’t targeting lake dwellers, but some combination of these techniques might work for those, too.

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