Discover Dragonflies During My Summer Seminar
Calopteryx dimidiata (Sparkling Jewelwing) / © Bryan Pfeiffer
PICK ANY SCENE FROM THE DRAMA OF LIFE ON EARTH: birth, growth, beauty, courtship, reproduction, subterfuge, betrayal, murder. Find them all expressed in the lives of dragonflies. Shakespeare could have written the script for these insects. And now you can join the drama this summer in Maine.
I’ll be teaching the Dragonfly and Damselfly seminar at the Eagle Hill Institute in Steuben, Maine, from July 5-11. During lectures, field trips, photography sessions, and lab work, you’ll learn to identify and enjoy these most audacious insects anywhere you find them on the planet.
Whether you swing a net or point a camera, I’ve designed the seminar for beginning and advancing field naturalists, including enlightened birders turning their binoculars toward other airborne animals. Not only that, our setting will include rivers, ponds and wetlands near the coast of eastern Maine.
Although dragonflies and damselflies are fairly easy to learn, they can be hard to catch or observe in the field. So my seminar will emphasize practical field skills for locating, identifying, photographing and enjoying members of the order we call Odonata. This course, a classic natural history seminar, will feature plenty of time outdoors in the company of these insects and just enough time indoors in lectures and lively conversation.
Here’s my Eagle Hill Institute bio for the seminar: Although he is most certainly a field entomologist, Bryan Pfeiffer is probably more of a teacher at heart. Over the course of three decades, he has lectured and guided people in the discovery of birds and insects. As a consulting field birder and entomologist, Bryan has worked for governments, timber companies, private landowners, and conservation groups. He has netted and photographed dragonflies and damselflies from tropical forests to above the Arctic Circle. Because he would rather spend time in the field, Bryan has a relatively small list of publications in odonatology to his credit, and is only making grudging progress on a book about dragonflies called Pantala: What an Insect Tells us about Sex, Evolution, and the Human Condition.
Contact me with any questions. Below are a few links to more information on the seminar and a montage to get you in the mood:
- General Seminar Description
- The Seminar Syllabus
- Eagle Hill Seminars Page (with links to fees and registration)
