Swamp Darner (Epiaeschna heros)
This is the only darner that is brown and green with thin green stripes on the abdomen, brilliant blue eyes, and often amber-tinted wings. Swamp darners forage from just above the ground to the very tree tops and, at rest, hang vertically from branches. Foraging adults may enter buildings and act very tame. They feed on large insects including cicadas, carpenter bees, and large dragonflies. Sometimes large numbers of them may be seen flying into swarms of termites or ants and gorging on them. The swamp darner is a true woodland vernal pool species, but also inhabits ponds, swamps, and slow streams.
The female oviposits in mud, dry pond bottoms, rotten wood, or sometimes in plant stems. This is one of a handful of species of dragonflies that is known to migrate but the details of such migration are poorly understood. Swamp darners average in length between 3.0 and 3.7 inches. William Hull
The swamp darner is a huge dragonfly, matched in size in Ohio only by the dragonhunter, which exceeds it not in length but in weight.
Large numbers of swamp darners may fly into swarms of termites or ants and gorge on them.
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