Beautiful Demoiselle

• The male performs a courtship dance before the female, opening and closing his wings and showing her the spot in the stream where she will be able to lay her eggs.
• Like the rest of the dragonflies and damselflies, the male can use his copulatory organ to remove the sperm of previous males before mating.
• Its presence indicates good-quality water with bankside vegetation: it disappears from channelised or unshaded stretches.
• The male's wings are an intense metallic blue, almost black against the light, and he flies with a slow, undulating wingbeat more reminiscent of a butterfly's than of a damselfly's.
• Its courtship is a spectacle: the male defends a patch of aquatic vegetation suitable for egg-laying and, when a female arrives, performs a display flight before her, opening and closing his wings and showing her the site. She chooses as much for the territory as for him.
• The female lays her eggs by piercing the stems of aquatic plants underwater, and she can submerge completely for more than half an hour, carrying air clinging to her body.
• It is very sensitive to pollution and to the channelling of watercourses, and its presence indicates a river in good condition.
• It is told apart from its relative Calopteryx splendens because that species has only a blue band on the wing rather than the whole wing coloured.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (insect)

Habitat & environment

Clean, shaded streams and rivers with moderate current

Sources consulted: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calopteryx_virgo

Best time: May to August, over shaded streams of clean water