Great Spreadwing

About the Great Spreadwing

The Great Spreadwing is one of the largest damselflies in North America, closer in bulk to a small dragonfly. It is dark bronzy-green with pale yellow stripes on the thorax, and blue eyes in the male. Like all spreadwings it perches with its wings half open at an angle - splitting the difference between dragonfly-flat and damselfly-folded.

It hangs vertically from streamside twigs, sallying out for small flying insects. Females insert their eggs into the woody stems of overhanging branches, sometimes many feet above the water, and the hatching larvae drop in.

In Texas the Great Spreadwing flies along slow, shaded streams and wooded pond edges from summer well into late fall, later in the year than most damselflies.