And I am looking through it right now! It reminded me to add this wonderful bluet that I saw at Pyramid Lake, Nevada a couple weeks ago. Such a perfect shade of turquoise.
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I don’t have a lot of blue in my ID’s but these have some blue in them, sort of, lol:
Pronghorn Clubtail:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/287720895
Some sort of small bee but I never got a full ID for it: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/284346490
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Elfin skimmer, the smallest dragonfly in North America. Light powdery blue, almost white
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/297437753
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Where to begin? I have so many…
This photo was so cute! They’re sharing the power line :)
Obviously haha
I have so many photos of blue dragonflies of all sorts…I think I’ll just go with this one
I think these are so beautiful
I know this is more green, but I thought it was pretty
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Spied this Peacock Fly last week on a fencing rail just as it was turning and caught the ‘blue flash’ of its wings at that critical angle.
Another curious thought I had: has a Peacock Fly ever met a Peacock Spider?
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An indigo bunting
Blue-tipped Dancer
Eastern tailed blue
Blue-grey gnatcatcher (he’s fine just toasty)
Powdered Dancer
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I know many of the hard core naturalists don’t care for these more photo sharing topics but here is a good discussion question for them regarding this Great BLUE Heron. Why do they some times hold there wings this way? For example, I know an Anhinga will hold it’s wings open to dry. But why do Great Blue Herons hold theirs like a big scoop sometimes? This is not the first time I have seen this and have other photos if anyone wants to see more.
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Hmm… interesting!
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Muscles and joints I assume. Its the wing drying position which allows the wings to sit open using the least ammount of energy. To hold them out higher, would likely use more energy.
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https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/289736241
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/288036632 ← these two flies are a wonderful blue.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/271609964 ← and coquina have shells in lots of colours, but the soft blue on them is quite nice to witness.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/253443177 ← or this blue-green fungi i find inside a lot of tree stumps!
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A lot of damselflies come in blue:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/91358674 Blue-fronted Dancer
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/91358673 Blue-ringed Dancer
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/90108584 Springwater Dancer
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/90115539 Rambur’s Forktail (has some blue on the end of the tail, though I’ll admit this one might not be a blue animal so much as an animal-with-blue)
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/91358661 Kiowa Dancer
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/91358661 Powdered Dancer
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/91358698 Aztec Dancer
And some dragonflies:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/86349923 Widow Skimmer
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/90108556 Eastern Pondhawk (observation chosen for the sexual dimorphism on display)
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/90108567 Blue Dasher
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Maybe even though they are wading birds and don’t often get their wings wet they probably do once in awhile wading in deep or splashing as they make a catch. It is a curious behavior.
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Wants something from you; he is trying to scoop it up 
Honestly have no clue, but nice pic!!
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You seem to know a lot of different Dancers. Those are tricky for me even to tell between Dancers and Bluets!
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Oh, I couldn’t identify most of these off the top of my head, I just had an Odonata guide open when I uploaded them. And I have some experience in trying to identify birds (especially sparrows and warblers) from a guide, which, as it turns out, contains one important lesson that translates well to a lot of other animals. Namely: when you’re faced with multiple different species that look very similar, when you have, say, a page full of little yellow birds that all look more or less right, pick a few small details and focus on those.
For those little birds, things like how much speckling (if any) is on the breast, how far any color on the back and sides extends onto the breast and underside, whether it has an eyering and how large that ring is, and what color the legs are can help a lot. If I notice that the bird I’m trying to ID has an eyering, I can immediately rule out any other species that don’t have eyerings.
Over time and practice, you get a feel for what particular details to look at, both to identify familiar species and when trying to pick out an unusual species. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a detail that’s evenly split, either- if you’re looking at twelve birds, six of which have speckled breasts and six of which have plain, with eleven of them having white eyerings and one having no eyering, both the breast patterns and the eyering are worth looking at. Particularly if you notice that your bird has no eyering.
For the impressive number of blue-with-black-stripes damselflies, one thing I notice is that the stripes across the thorax tend to be very consistent within the same species, but can vary a lot between different species. The color at the tip of the abdomen, whether the black stripes or the blue stripes are wider, whether all the stripes are the same width, how many stripes there are, the color/patterns of the eyes, and whether the pterostigmas (the little colored spots on the leading edges of their wings) are a color other than black, also strike me as details worth looking at.
Pick enough individual details, and even if you’re looking at, say, five different species that all have roughly the same thickness and number of black abdominal stripes, you might notice that your particular damselfly has unmarked eyes and that all the others have striped eyes. Or you might see that your damselfly has thin thorax stripes and a clear/absent-looking pterostigma, and that all but one of the five options has either the thin stripes or a clear pterostigma, not both.
(note: both examples above are made-up numbers for the sake of examples. I don’t actually know if there are five different damselfly species that fit those details, I’m just trying to get the general idea across.)
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