NATURE: Dragonflies have some fascinating behavior, agrees Joyce Stoltz of Battle Creek, Mich.

We shared a story from a Wilcox reader earlier this month about a swarm of dragonflies, something she had never seen before. Joyce, who calls the insects “darning needles,” saw a swarm too.

She gets The Era mailed to her home, and read with interest about the curious behavior of the insects. She explained she was in the area at the Stoltz homestead on West Washington Street for the annual Corydon reunion, along with her son Garth and his wife.

“Friday evening they went out to eat. I chose to relax in the peacefulness of the front yard in the valley and watch the clouds roll by while reminiscing about the past, for my deceased husband, Duff, was born and raised in Corydon and our first home was in the town,” Joyce shared.

“Suddenly the sky above me became filled with darning needles and they seemed to be swooping on me as though I had invaded their space. Then I watched as a second group of them flew out from the big pine tree by the road.
“I watched their activity for some time; the two groups did not mingle. There were hundreds in each group, but they moved so erratically it was difficult to determine. I, too, have never seen anything like this and maybe it is unique to the area, for there is always something so interesting in RTS to keep me subscribing,” she said.

Thanks, Joyce. We happen to be fans of The Era ourselves.

We turned to Scientific American for an answer on swarming dragonflies. It is common for this time of year, we learned. There are two kinds of swarms — static feeding swarms, where the dragonflies “fly repeatedly over a well-defined area and fairly close to the ground, usually feeding on clouds of small insects, and migratory swarms, with “hundreds to millions of dragonflies flying in a single direction in massive groups, often (50 to 100 feet) above the ground,” read the website for Scientific American.

“However these swarms are very difficult to study because they are incredibly ephemeral events. You have to be in the right place at the right time to see one and many people will go their entire lives without ever witnessing a swarm.”

Sounds to us like our readers were lucky to see such a neat natural occurrence.