The Search for the Dragon(fly) Warrior
One of the questions I was asked in my most recent adoption was what I would do if I were not a physicist. I’m pretty sure I would do something in science, and I have an interest in evolution and paleontology. The stumbling block to going in that direction was the squishy part of biology — when I was in school, I was pretty sure animal dissection would start by making me weak-in-the-knees, followed by me throwing up, and I had no desire to test that prediction. Consequently, I haven’t studied a whole lot of biology, including entomology.
But dragonflies are pretty fascinating. They don’t fall under the “bugs to be avoided” category — not gross house-invaders, nor do they want to sting me. I had no idea that they flap their sets of wings out of phase, though it makes sense (if it were in phase, why not just have a bigger wing?) But I have some shots where it looks like maybe the two sets are at slight different frequencies, so the phase changes. I also didn’t realize how much they glide when they fly. And the flapping is low enough in frequency that it shows up well on a high-speed camera — a much lower pitch than many other insects.
It’s also really hard to pan a camera to follow them. I think I saw six distinct species; these were the biggest and flew high, while a few others tended to hug the ground, and yet others I only saw in the woods.
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I agree – dragonflies = awesome. We have tons down here. They say it is the fastest insect in the world. Eats mosquitoes. What else could you want?
Completely awesome. Do you have a lot of dragonflies that just fly around constantly like that? I feel like most of the ones I see are hovering, with only short bursts of zooming around.
The ones I saw hovering were in poor lighting in the woods, and the shots didn’t turn out too well. Too many shadows. The big ones that are in the video flew around a lot, without much hovering.
Cicada season is coming up. I don’t know if this is a big year for us, but if it is, that should be interesting.
Great video! I’ve tried getting some video of them before but failed miserably. But I do watch them regularly and always fascinated by them. Also like u I was amazed at how often they glide – it makes sense, but in watching them with the naked eye one would never know that they even glide!
What video camera did you use and at what speed?
Is there a chance I can get a HR copy of your dragonfly shots?
It’s a Casio Exilim EX-FH20; these are at 420 fps. There is no higher-res version — this is it — so you might as well just use a program to download the file from youtube (my youtube account is swansontea. You can subscribe for when I upload more videos). I’ve used keepvid with some success: http://keepvid.com/