Potamarcha congener

I was on my way to the park entrance and was walking past a row of parked cars, most of them with the windscreen wipers all standing up.  This practice of lifting the wipers off the glass and leaving it standing up is based on the belief that it will prolong the lifespan of the wiper blades.

Anyway, I then realised there was a dragonfly perched on one of these windscreen wipers.

 

 

I looked further up along the row of parked cars and there were dragonflies there too.

 

 

So I turned around to look at the ones I had walked past and there was a dragonfly on almost every windscreen wiper as well. 

 

 

I have been keeping an eye out for insects and birds, looking at trees and shrubs but not at these cars and that's where all the dragonflies are perched.  I just had to laugh then!

Each and every dragonfly perched on these wiper blades is the Potamarcha congener of the family Libellulidae.  The male has hindwing length of 33-34 mm.  It has blue pruinescence on its thorax and base of its abdomen with parallel orange streaks on the distal part of the abdomen till S8.  This species is common in open, disturbed habitats and widespread in tropical Asia.

 

 

The female is brown and obscurely marked.

 

 

I had first come across this species over a year ago and do not recall why I have not mentioned it before. 

Anyway, in recent weeks, I have been seeing lots of these dragonflies in many places.  I have seen quite a few pairs in wheel but could never get the chance to get any photos.  These dragonflies would be in wheel position and in flight for barely a minute and they would be out of it before you can even take a snap.

The female would then oviposit into the water by flipping the tip of its abdomen at various spots to scatter the fertilised eggs in the water while the male hovers overhead keeping guard.  The male dragonfly will chase away every dragonfly that comes near the female.

This female dragonfly was ovipositing into the pond.

 

 

There were certainly a lot of these dragonflies perched everywhere, mostly in high places.