It migrates like a bird
Green darners fly south in autumn and north in spring, in a relay over three generations.
An American yard · Dragonflies, damselflies and mayflies
Common green darner
Anax junius
A large dragonfly with a bright green thorax. The male's abdomen is sky blue.
- Size
- About 7.5cm long, wingspan 9 to 11cm
- Look for it
- April to October
- Where
- Ponds, lakes and fields across North America
Hovers after you, then darts. Move your pointer and see.
When to look
Green darner
Good to know
Six things about the green darner
Four hundred miles
Dragonflies fitted with tiny radio tags were followed for more than four hundred miles.
A darning needle
Darner comes from darning needle, which its long body was thought to look like.
Almost all eye
Its eyes cover most of its head and see nearly all the way round.
It hardly ever misses
It catches mosquitoes, flies and even other dragonflies in the air, and succeeds almost every time.
First of the year
It is one of the first dragonflies seen in spring, because it flies up from the south.
The real thing
Photos of the green darner
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Photos are from Wikimedia Commons, used under the free licences shown. They have been resized, and cropped where they appear in link previews.
How to spot one
Watch over any pond on a sunny day for a big dragonfly patrolling back and forth at head height. Take an adult with you.
How to help
A pond without fish, with plants at the edge, is all it takes. The young live under water and eat mosquito larvae.
Keep going