Damselfly confirmation ...Eastern Europe (lithuania) (1 Viewer)

Okay, a couple more that have been puzzling me ...

Picture one - photographed Blue-tailed Damselfly already and thought they were easy, then photographed these and they stumped me for a while. Previous ones had been rufesens females and quite different and had not noticed the greenness of the eyes as in this one, but after quite a while scratching my head, I have concluded this is an infuscans female. Any confirmation?



Picture two - Lestes sponsa (Emerald Damselfly) or Lestes dryas (Scarce Emerald Damselfly)? I lean towards sponsa on pterostigma

Might expect brighter blue eyes on dryas too.

The Blue-tails look like elegans to me but don't know offhand what else might be possible there.

Thanks Brian, just a query on your reply - the Blue-tails I was happy (ish) as elegans as a species, but was identifying to infuscans as a form (according to Askew, only guide I have). Are you saying elegans to the species or is there an elegans form too, i.e. Ischnura elegans elegans?! Maybe I better worry just about species!

I would say infuscans or infuscans-obsoleta (now called rufescens-obsoleta). It's hard to tell how much of the colouring might have been affected by shadow. Brooks says:"After about 8 days the thorax and blue abdomen of rufescens becomes yellowish-brown, giving the mature form rufescens-obsoleta. The violacea form matures into...infuscens with brownish thorax, black thoracic stripes and brown segment 8."

Yes, sorry Jos. The species is definitely elegans - no sub-species that I'm aware of. The female looks like the form described as rufescens-obsoleta in Brooks but note that Dijkstra does not use these names for the female forms and would describe that as a mature type 'C'.

Watched an andromorphic female ovipositing today.