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A swarm of biblical proportions

3 min read

The dragonflies have come and gone, having made a spectacle of themselves along the way. I spent some time with them last weekend, and am here to say I’m a little creeped out, but also impressed.

Saturday evening, I took my bike to Frostburg, Md., for a ride on the Great Allegheny Passage. Pulling into the trailhead parking lot, I noticed what looked to be a swarm of something around a trash can. Bees, I thought.

But then the swarm got larger and noisier. Whatever they were, the insects were flying everywhere, darting high and low, hitting the picnic tables and the hood of my car.

I realized what this was: green darner dragonflies headed south for the winter. I’m no entomologist, but I’d heard about this in a weather report. At first, forecasters thought those pancake-shaped blobs on radar were storms. No, they were swarms – three huge ones over Pennsylvania and surrounding states.

And they’d stopped for a layover in Frostburg.

I stepped out of the car. While getting my bike off the rack, the dragonflies found me, dive-bombing my helmet like little kamikaze pilots. (This is why you should always wear your helmet.)

It was biblical. Across the parking lot, hikers and cyclists were jumping back into their cars. I did the same. When safely inside, I called the farmer.

“Cool,” he said. “I’d like to stand in the middle of them.”

“You would,” I said.

“They won’t bite you,” he said. “They only want to eat bugs.”

He was right – this was a phenomenon and maybe my only chance ever to participate in a dragonfly swarm. I got out of the car and turned my smartphone to video to try to capture it all, or at least to get a still shot of one of them. But they were too skittish and, most remarkably, never landed anywhere. I must have looked or smelled like a bug just then, because they kept flying into my helmet.

Turns out the swarm likely stopped in Frostburg because it had rained a lot the day and night before. The dragonflies have a taste for mosquitoes, and mud puddles tend to attract those. While on the trail the next day, I chatted with some other cyclists who say the swarm was seen elsewhere in Frostburg that morning. Scientists say they might be headed to Central America, but they can’t be sure.

Why haven’t we heard about these swarms before? Dragonflies look almost prehistoric, and are often featured in artistic depictions of dinosaur scenes; they’ve been migrating south for millions of years. I’ve been cycling that trail for a decade, and this swarm is a first.

My video of the scene shows dark flecks darting all over the screen. You wouldn’t think dragonflies, but rather bees or house flies. I wish just one of them would have landed so I could have taken its picture. But they were too busy.

If they were catching and eating tiny bugs in midair during all of this activity, then these insects are as mighty and skillful as any bald eagle. Impressed as I was, I’d had enough. Back in the car, I watched the swarm for about 20 minutes. And then, almost all at once they were gone. The trailhead was quiet again.

The dragonflies had moved on south. And I had a story to tell.

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