Filigree Skimmer Emerges in California

Filigree Skimmers are quite rare in CA, having been only recorded once as a vagrant in 2004, then not again until 2015 when Michael Ouellette had some come to his small backyard pond near Cowles Mountain in San Diego, San Diego County. He had first reported a male at his pond on February 15, 2015.
Then on March 10, 2015, he saw another Filigree at his pond.
He continued to see Filigrees occasionaly at his pond, here is an image he took

Next, Michael saw female Filigrees apparently oviposing and then on May 7, Michael recorded what he believed to be Filigree nymph in his pond!


Excitingly, on June 15, Michael found a teneral female Filigree Skimmer that had crawled out of his San Diego backyard pond! He was able to collect her exuvia. This was a FIRST for California and thusly they are now recorded as breeding in the state.


At this time we were aware that the nymph that Michael had recorded earlier were actually Pantala, but at least they had served to keep him observant!
This emergence date was exactly 3 months to the day from when Michael had first seen the female ovipositing in his pond. This gives them one of the shortest known life cycles in California.

And on June 22nd, another emerged! Michael had written, I saw a few more Ps nymphs today. They are so elusive that I never know how many there are, but I expect at least a few more. I only hope I can be there to see them. Generally I gave up trying to watch for them since they always come out at 3am with nothing for days then a bunch at once. I wouldn't get any sleep if I really was trying to catch them in the act. So far I have just been lucky.

Later, on August 1,2015, another Filigree Skimmer emerged from this same pond.

CLick here to download an artilce Michael wrote about his experience for Argia- the quarterly newsletter of the Dragonfly Society of the Americas.