Hi Ben. I agree. I'm pretty sure this is a Tramea carolina, but I'm not positive. When I first began to shoot this bug, it was spending a lot of time near the sides of the little mini-aquarium I was using to photograph him in. I didn't want the sides of the box in the photos, so I took a micro-spoon and tried to shoo him away from the sides of the box. He zoomed from one side of the box to the other, always winding up by the side of the box, so I persisted in harassing him. At a certain point, he seemed to give up on the flight response and prepared to fight. At one point, he wedged himself into a corner with his head near the surface of the water and his mouth open, as if waiting to bite the micro-spoon that kept coming down and touching him. I immediately dropped the microspoon and started photographing him. Unfortunately, I didn't have any time to do any text exposures or anything, so the shots weren't well exposed. --Dave

Thanks, Joyce. Yeah, this guy's a real beast. When I went out to collect today, I took only one specimen jar with me. I ended up collecting three dragonfly larvae (two Skimmers and a Darner). In the ten minutes it took me to get them home and separate them, this guy had eaten one of the other larvae.

--Catfish