Why so many? I couldn’t count of course.
i don’t think this is a phenomenon isolated to Hyderabad.
but before we discuss further… i just have to clarify: are you asking this as part of a school assignment? (there have been a lot of students asking for answers to their school assignments lately, and providing answers in those cases doesn’t really serve anyone well.)
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The odes u are seeing are Pantala flavescens. Their migration is happening right now, from august to september. I had written about this a while ago, copy pasting-
This species is seen in huge swarms over paddy fields, lakes, playgrounds, basically any open area. The individuals fly for hours together using thermal currents to their advantage. The arrival of this species in india coincides with the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone(ITCZ) They have a stong preference for moist winds, which makes them migrate to india along with the first monsoon winds. Globe skimmers make an annual migration of about 18000 km, which is the longest known insect migration.
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Here’s a good Ted Talk about the discovery/recognition of this migration by Pantala flavescens:
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A few years ago a swarm of dragonflies (and other animals) turned up on weather radar in the US.
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Summer monsoons in the Southwest US often trigger large numbers of dragonflies but whether that’s due to individuals being pushed north by storms or just the time of year when adults and ephemeral breeding ponds are most abundant, not sure. Maybe more of the latter but some influence by the former. We often see rarities get pushed farther north from Mexico following major tropical storms.
Pantala flavescens is an impressive species — nearly global in range. I’ve seen them in my area of the Southwest and in Hawaii where they apparently got there on their own.
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- Russell, et al 1998 Massive Swarm Migrations of Dragonflies (Odonata) in Eastern North America
Records of large dragonfly migrations show several distinct patterns: (1) all reports fell between late July and mid-October, with a peak in September; (2) most of the large flights occurred along topographic leading lines such as coastlines and lakeshores; (3) massive swarm migrations generally followed the passage of synoptic-scale cold fronts; and (4) the common green darner (Anax junius) was the principal species involved in the majority of these flights. Striking parallels between the patterns of seasonal timing, geographical distribution, and meteorological context of dragonfly migrations and those of birds suggest that similar causal factors are involved.
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About 10 years ago in September, a colleague of mine observed huge numbers of dragonflies moving through a desert shrubland in SE New Mexico while he was doing field work. His crew caught and photo’d one of them which I IDed as a recently emerged Anax junius. Apparently migrating swarms of this species have been detected in late summer/fall in this area before.
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@Odonut Yeah, I have been seeing lots of P.flavescens but I have ALSO been seeing the following since the last month ( excluding P.flavescens) -
- Diplacodes trivialis
- Lestes elatus (and by the way, thanks @Odonut for identifying the observation)
- Lestes concinnus
- Anax sp.
- Ischnura rubilio
due to the recent rains in the telangana region, odonates are emerging…in a dry region like telangana we wont find much odonata in summers and winter but in the monsoon, its natural for the ode populations to “boom”. They emerge from larval stage at this time of the year due to the climatic conditions :)
Oh, yeah
Thanks for this topic @mitvij, and welcome to the forum!
I don’t have anything to add but I wanted to thank you because your question has reminded me that I took a photo a couple years back of a large red dragonfly here in Southern Ontario (Canada) about a week before Christmas. It was an exceptionally warm fall and snowless, but I was still very surprised to see it.
Now to wade through the great unorganized back archives for that shot!
No.
Thanks for asking, though!
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