vivid dancer
Argia vivida

I don't have a good ID book for odonates.

We also saw several large, very fast, red dragonflies. I would initially guess that they were big red skimmers (Libellula saturata), but the wings seemed to be entirely red. It's possible they could have been dusty skimmers (Sympetrum illotum), but they seemed bigger than 40 mm. I may never know since I wasn't able to capture a picture of them.

ps 02/06/11 - Well, I finally looked into this damselfly, which was originally posted as an unknown. First, it's a bluet (Enallagma spp.) for sure, because it's wings are held close to the body, whereas dancers (Argia spp.) hold their wings up and away from the body. Since the abdomen appears mostly black from the top view, I've narrowed it down to 2 species: E. praevarum (arroyo bluet) or E. carunculatum (tule bluet). My picture does not clearly show the male appendages, so the next best thing is to consider the habitat. According to Don Roberson (his site is linked in the species names above), arroyos prefer rivers and small streams, while tules prefer marshes and ponds (both appropriately named). Unfortunately, this was taken near where Los Padres Dam spills into the Carmel River. Simply based on photos and previous records from Carmel River, I'm leaning towards E. praevarum. Thanks everyone for your comments!

pss 02/10/11 - Sigh, I've made another correction to the ID above, but I'm keeping my previous postscript to show how I reasoned my incorrect ID of a bluet. Kind thanks to Jim Johnson at Northwest Dragonflier and Odonata.Bogfoot.net for helping me learn what to look for when identifying damselflies. With his permission, here's a snippet from his e-mails, "...because of the angle the wings are obscuring the abdomen and that's why there is so little pattern visible there. One thing that indicates that it's a dancer and not a bluet is the extent of blue at the end of the abdomen. On all the western bluets, the blue is limited to segments 8 and 9, and 10 (the last smallest one) is largely black, especially on the top portions. The western dancers (the blue ones, anyway) are blue across all three segments which is what this ones shows." Jim goes on to say, "The wing position is helpful, but you can't rely on it for distinguishing dancers and bluets." I wish Kathy Biggs, author of Common Dragonflies of California, had stated this versus making a point of dancers (with "wings held above abdomen") and bluets (with "wings at rest held alongside abdomen"). Don't get me wrong, her book is great for novice odonate fans like me and I still recommend it.