A few Dragonflies from Belize, Central America

• By Richard Fray

My travels have continued right through winter 2002 (I know, lucky so-and-so!) and in February 2003 I spent 12 fantastic days in Belize, Central America. It is a wonderful country for wildlife-watching: the birding was excellent (I managed over 170 species without much effort or travelling); the mammals entertaining (especially the Black Howler Monkeys), and the reptiles were stunning - snakes (including a seven-foot Tropical Rat Snake, and a sighting of the deadly Feur de Lance), a baby American Crocodile, and huge iguanas everywhere! Also, the insect life was pretty spectacular (oh, those butterflies!), and I managed to get a few photos of dragonflies and damselflies as I went along.

We stayed at the duPlooy's Jungle Lodge, near San Ignacio in the Cayo district, and on the property, a superb little pool with a very convenient 'duck blind' (or bird hide to us British) gave perfect opportunities for photographing Northern Jacanas, Blue-winged Teal, Least Grebe, and a host of other birds. Luckily, a few dragonflies also came close enough...

This is a libellulid dragonfly, which I think (from the limited research I've managed) is one of the Dythemis species, possibly sterilis? These are known as 'setwings', for obvious reasons - the above shot was captured just as it landed, but once settled they always adopt the position below:

I've no idea about the identity of the next one. Superficially, it looks a little bit like the Crocothemis servilia servilia from my South-east Asia article, but the body shape would suggest a 'skimmer' type (Orthetrum?).

I stumbled upon an excellent little site one afternoon, a small stream by Aguacate Lagoons, near the Mennonite community of Spanish Lookout. I photographed this damselfly, which I assume is of the family Coenagrionidae:

Also by the stream were dozens of this fascinating little dragonfly, which I can only describe as being like a miniature (2cm) Black-tailed Skimmer!

I've had a brief look around the net, and have found a couple of websites with good photo galleries: 'Odonata Picture Gallery, Species of Central America' at http://www-public.tu-bs.de:8080/~y0003753/Startpage.htm, and a very comprehensive site with quite bizarre scanned dead dragonflies, 'Odonata known from La Selva Biological Station, Costa Rica' at http://137.99.27.79/dragonfly/dragonflies.htm.

However, I've still not been able to identify any of these with certainty, so if anybody has any ideas, or more patience to go through all the photos, please contact us.

Many more of my photos from Belize (including, amongst others, hundreds of bird pics, a few butterflies, the howler monkeys, some iguanas and the baby croc!), and my other recent travels (Arizona, Thailand, Cambodia, Scilly and Shetland), can be found on my own website at: www.rpf-wildlife-photos.com.