Dragonflies are important members of the Town Fauna. Because juvenile dragonflies live in the water, adults are most frequently observed near ponds or canals. They are closely related to damselflies, and are often mistaken for one another.
Numerous species of varying colors, shapes and sizes call Davis home, though Skimmers are probably the most common. Dragonflies are not only beautiful, but also very helpful as they eat mainly mosquitoes and gnats during their adult life and mosquito larvae while they are nymphs.
Dragonflies are also one of the few predators of solitary honeybees (eating the individual bees rather than going after the colony), picking them off in flight. Many birds do this as well.
The adult (flying) stage of the Dragonfly's life lasts a couple weeks to a couple months. This explains why you frequently see them mating and why you don't see any during winter. While they may not individually live very long, the species is thought to predate dinosaurs by about 100 million years, making them the oldest flying insect on fossil record.