Eastern Pondhawk

About the Eastern Pondhawk

A medium-sized dragonfly whose two sexes look so different that people routinely take them for separate species. The female and the young male are a vivid grass-green with bold black rectangles marching down the abdomen. As a male matures he turns over completely to a chalky powder-blue, the green fading out from the front of the body backward, so half-changed individuals wear green faces on blue bodies. In every plumage the face stays green, which separates a pondhawk from the other blue skimmers around a Texas pond.

Pondhawks are aggressive hunters and are not fussy about the size of what they take. They perch flat on bare ground, docks, and stones rather than up on stems, launch at anything passing, and will readily kill damselflies and dragonflies as large as themselves, eating on the ground or from a low perch. Males hold territory along a pond margin and drive off rivals with fast, low, direct flights.

Mating is brief, and the pair separates so the female can lay alone, tapping the tip of her abdomen against the water surface again and again while the male hovers on guard above her. The eggs sink and hatch into aquatic naiads that hunt among the pond bottom debris, taking insects and even small tadpoles, before crawling out and splitting their skins to emerge as adults.

Across Texas this is one of the most abundant and widespread pond dragonflies, at home in stock tanks, park ponds, and slow creek pools alike, and on the wing from late spring until the first real cold.