Birth of a Dragonfly

Dragonflies lay their eggs in the waters of lakes and ponds. These eggs hatch into nymphs - non-descript little bugs that look kind of like crickets. These nymphs live underwater for a year or more, eating other little creatures in their environment.

Eventually, when the time is right, they crawl up from their watery homes, dry off in the sun, and shed their old skins on their ways to becoming adult dragonflies. At certain times during the spring and summer, one can observe hundreds of these nymphs at a time, clinging to grasses, branches, and rocks along the shores of lakes and ponds, at various stages of transformation.

I have had the pleasure of watching this transformation process up close and now share it with you.

This is a time-lapse video showing a dragonfly nymph emerging from its old exoskeleton and transforming before your eyes into an adult dragonfly. I shot the sequence of still images for this video on June 23, 2008 where I live in Upsala, Ontario, Canada. In real time, the whole event spanned a period of about 1 1/2 hours.

This was my very first attempt at time-lapse photography.

Видео Birth of a Dragonfly канала Paul Beebe