Notes from an Environmentalist.

Newport Folk Festival disrupted by swarms of beautiful blue dasher dragonflies.

                             Dragonflies

This past weekend I was displaying books at the Olde Ipswich Days Fair when this beautiful fellow, dropped out of a tree. He was mangled and half dead so I assume a bird had dropped the giant blue dasher dragonfly, from one of the overhanging branches.

Earlier I watched a pair of them engaging in either battle on some extravagant mating activity on the windshield of my car at the North Shore Mall.  

Little did I know that this mosquito eating machine was on the tail end of his annual migration.

This was a usually rare blue dasher but this year they have erupted in the largest swarms ever witnessed in North America. Curiously all of them appear to be male.

Last week hundreds of thousands of the ornately colored Odonates descended on Rhode Island beaches and the annual Newport folk festival was disrupted by screams of delight and fright as the gossamer winged monsters flew over and landed on revelers.