jeff_melvaine's Favorites

I know rosenbergi is now known from the NT... We saw lots of Gynacantha on our trip and all looked like this. Slimmer abdomen than shown for rosenbergi in the guide. Appendages match dobsoni and the abdomen pattern matches. Although rosenbergi and dobsoni are similar I believe that abdomen pattern will differ enough to enable identification in the future.

saw this female flutter into a bush, thought it was an unusually small Sapphire but had the characteristic Jewel like flight pattern. She flew down into the base of water grasses and started laying eggs before disappearing into thicker grass (last pic shows the area)

I was walking on the track from the car park to the Tully river when the Giant Petaltail landed on a tree trunk in front of me. I took some photos and then it flew out over the river but returned to a tree in front of me. I then noticed it had caught a dragonfly for a meal (see photos 3 and 4)

I present to you: the largest dragonfly in the world, featuring my face for size comparison! :P Photos simply don't convey its sheer size and bulk but hopefully having something for comparison helps.

Anyway, story time! This guy was flying around erratically for at least an hour and a half since we arrived - I assume due to the missing wing half. I hadn't seen it myself but a couple of my friends had, and it somehow hit me in the side of the head and quickly flew off. :P
Anyway, while we were all chilling around the river, it decided to fly straight into the waterfall (in the background in pic 3) and was promptly swept downstream. What else could I do?? I jumped in and chased after it! 😂
As you can tell from the photos, my swim was successful, and I ended up with the most enormous dragonfly I have ever seen right before me. :P I can't even properly describe how enormously huge it was. And those amazing cerci! I gave it some time to dry off, but being humid tropical Queensland, it wasn't happening very quickly. It was more than happy to sit on my hand and so I wondered if it would prefer somewhere a bit higher and drier :P
So that is how it ended up on my face! As it dried and we were plagued by march flies, the obvious solution was to give him one to eat. He accepted it gratefully and somehow ate the entire thing in a single bite. Hopefully that goes a way into showing just how huge and formidable these guys are! Not content, he then sliced his huge mandibles into my nose -_- and had to be gently prized off. He slowly lapped up blood for a while after but luckily didn't do any more biting! If I squint in the mirror I can still see a faint line there now :P
He sat for about an hour before we had to leave and I left him on a shrub. I hope he was okay with half a wing missing, but there wasn't much else I could do. All in all one of the best experiences of my life! :D

First photo is by Haley Harding because I am incapable of taking selfies :P