Spotted Darter Dragonflies (고추잠자리)
Female 'chili dragonfly' lazing in the sun
October sees the second flush of dragonflies, the first being around mid-summer. The specie dominating this flush is the ‘Spotted Darter,’ (definetly –Sympetrum and possibly – Depressiusculum). In Korean these are known as ‘chili dragonflies’ (고추잠자리) as the males are bright red. Unfortunately, my one-room roof seemed only to attract females.
a temporary rest
the male is bright red in colour
© Nick Elwood 2010 Creative Commons Licence.
Dragonfly Days (물잠자리)
A male 'chili dragonfly' (고추잠자리). This type appear is common in early October
Mid August and the dragonflies (잠자리) are hovering over puddles and pools of water. There are several ‘flushes’ of dragonfly with another in early autumn. I suspect these are collectively known as ‘water dragonflies’ (물잠자리) irrespective of actual specie. Sometimes you can see them in large numbers erratically darting here and there. Some are probably damselflies (실잠자리) which are distinguished from dragonflies in much the same way as butterflies are from moths, in that when resting a dragonfly’s wings are 90 degrees to its body, in contrast, a damselfly’s wings rest along the body itself. Dragonflies can fly in six directions, up, down, forwards, backwards and side to side.
Bright blue damselflies and deep brown reddish dragonflies seem to be particularly prominent around my area of Daegu at present.
A damselfly (실잠자리)
Clicking this link will take you to David Hasenick’s photo gallery which besides hosting some excellent photos of dragonflies, also has a number of other Korean categories.
While searching for information on Korean dragonflies, I discovered a ‘list’ of the variations in Korean regional dialect for ‘dragonfly.’
'Dragonfly' - regional variations in dialect
© Nick Elwood 2010. This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
Elwood 5566 
2 comments