My first Baskettail sp.

Dragonflies are flying again.  The species number is not high, but I have seen a few.  Of these, Green Darners (so far only males) and Black Saddlebags seem to be most common.  I also saw a male Twelve-spotted Skimmer on Saturday along with a few Dot-tailed Whiteface - both first of the year for me.

On Saturday, I also netted my first ever baskettail at Crosswinds Marsh.  In fact, not only is this my first baskettail sp. ever seen, this is the very first dragonfly I have ever netted.  Imagine my surprise when this happened.  Despite holding it in my fingers, an email exchange with Darrin O'Brien suggests that my dragonfly will remain identified only to Epitheca sp.

Epitheca sp.

This, to me, is likely to be a Common Baskettail, but as Darrin points out to me from an Urban Odes blog entry, Identifying Odonata from Photographs, dating back to July 2010, I'll probably never know. Further, he writes,  "ID is very difficult in this region to differentiate the species.  Common (E. cynosura) is most common here, but others are possible.  Some baskettails cannot even be identified under the microscope."  Click on the blog entry link and scroll down a bit to hybrids and uncertain taxonomy to read more about the difficulty of identifying Epitheca to species in this region.

For another Urban Odes article for more specifics see New County Record:  Stripe-winged Baskettail from August 2006.