In late June I drove to Scriber Lake State Park, a few blocks east of Highway 99, in Lynnwood, Washington. The park is a very wet one and the paths are often muddy. The lake is bordered by spatterdock, reminding me of the boat ramp area of Steven Foster State Park in Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp. My visit this time was sort of random — I had some shopping to do nearby and thought I would stop and see what photos I could get. As I worked my way down the path I spotted a tiny damselfly with blue dots on the thorax. This pattern was new to me and I later discovered that this was the Pacific forktail, a species that I had never seen before. I spent the next few minutes trying to avoid getting my shoes muddied (I had already gotten my pant’s knees wet taking photos of the forktail) and arrived at Scriber Lake itself and the boardwalk that is often used by fishermen. The air was full of dragonflies! I had never seen it like this in Washington, but then I had not visited the lake in June. There were at least three species of dragonflies involved, plus at least one damselfly species that was not a forktail. The most numerous dragonfly seemed to be my old friend, the blue dasher, followed by the blue-eyed darner and the eight-spotted skimmer. The damselfly seemed to be the northern bluet, but could have been its close brother, the boreal bluet. Add to these my own discovery of several autumn meadowhawks last fall, and there is a respectable fauna!
While Washington is not a great center of odonate diversity, it does have a fair number of these ancient insects (over 80 species have been found in the state). An identification key can be found at www.pugetsound.edu/… I have myself seen two more species from Edmonds Marsh, the common whitetail and the paddle-tailed darner, as well as seeing, but not being able to photograph, a large spreadwing damselfly (family Lestidae). Another person has photographed a cardinal meadowhawk from Edmonds Marsh. I have since seen and photographed (from a distance) eight-spotted skimmers at Good Hope Pond in Pine Ridge Park, in Edmonds.