After falling slave to Deadline Madness for almost a decade, I managed last summer to redefine “urgency.” (Broadly speaking, the top 3 drop-everything-and-go-for-it priorities are Love. Strawberries. Summer.)

Practically speaking, that has meant jumping into a lake whenever I ride by.

And this week, that has meant noticing how many damselflies are out at Mosquito Lake.

Given the way they fly and frolic like camera-shy fairies, I double-checked with local fishing guru, Brad Knowles at the Pemberton Fish Finder, and he confirmed that they are adult damsel flies. (If you want to know how to tie a damselfly fly, he’s your man.)

And thanks to the fauna geeks at UBC, here’s a little insight into the life and times of a damselfly.

• You could call them dragonflies and you wouldn’t technically be wrong. They belong to the order Odonata, which contains about 5000 species.
• On close inspection they look primitive because the Odonata and their ancestors are some of the most ancient of insects.
• In BC, there are 2 sub-orders, the Zygoptera (damselflies) and Anisoptera (dragonflies). The damselflies are slimmer, often smaller and usually slower than dragonflies, and their equal-sized wings are usually held together above the body. Zygoptera means “joined wings.”
• Unlike most insects, they can work their four wings independently, making them superb aerial predators. (Take that, mosquitoes.)
• The adults only live for about one or two months. Many species of damselfly in BC develop rapidly – with an entire life cycle unfolding in just a year.

Based on their  electric blue colour, I’m going to guess that Mosquito Lake has a decent population of Argia vivida  (the vivid dancer) damselfly – one of the province’s red-listed species.

(But I coudn’t get them to stop still for long enough to be sure. Any local experts are welcome to help me out!)