Teneral damselflies - Düsseldorf, Germany (1 Viewer)

[David_]

Hello,

I took these photos on May 7th along a small stream in Düsseldorf. The only fully colored damselflies around were Large Red Damselfly and Common Bluetail.
Is it possible to identify the species for these teneral damselflies?
If so are all three Common Bluetails? Observation.org (with >90% confidence for all three images) and iNaturalist both suggest Small Bluetail but I don't think that's correct.

David

 

[pdwinter]

Yes - all pumilio. 1. Female showing pronotum shape/pattern, 2. Male showing pattern on S8/S9. 3. Female showing extent of orange on S1/S2/S3.

 

[David_]

Thank you.

That‘s a new species for me for this location. I have been visiting it quite regularly for the last 3 years and never come across a single Small Bluetail before.
Kind of a different habitat than most of the other places I have found Small Bluetails before.

 

[pdwinter]

They do tend to wander and briefly colonise a new site but will move on if conditions are not right for them. Perhaps last year some vegetation was cleared and water levels low because of the heatwaves so they thought it was a good place ?

 

[David_]

Yes, that sounds like a reasonable explanation. Water levels were very low and some part of the bed of the stream dried up and was exposed. Also the vegetation next to the stream wasn’t as dense as usual.