Record rainfall brings swarms of dragonflies to Chicago

Tom Swinford, an ecologist with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, believes the dragonflies were drawn by the abundance of water. The insects spend most of their lives in water as larvae, he said, and Illinois saw its wettest June on record.

Hundreds of dragonflies can be seen whizzing around the lakefront in Chicago, especially in the north-side neighborhoods of Lakeview and Lincoln Park, the Chicago Tribune reported.

"It's the most I've ever seen," said Brian Shustrick of Lakeview, who walks his dog every day near Belmont Harbor.

Shustrick said he's noticed a surge in dragonflies in the past month and sometimes sees 50 to 70 of them at a time.

"They'll start with two or three, and then there's little groups of them," he said. "Definitely after 5 p.m., they're everywhere."

Dragonflies tend to float around on their own during the day, and hunt together starting at dusk in large, cloudlike groups called feeding swarms, Swinford said.

"They're just taking advantage of all those yummy flies and midges," he said. "That's the neat thing about dragonflies — they don't sting, they don't bite, they don't give off bad odors. They're really beneficial insects. And definitely our friends."

Dragonflies are aggressive hunters, snacking on mosquitoes and gnats, too, and have had about 300 million years to perfect the process, said Gareth Blakesley, coordinator of the Illinois Odonate Survey, a volunteer group that measures dragonfly density throughout the state.

"Dragonflies can be cannibalistic too, so they're known to eat each other if they're in the wrong place," he said.

Since dragonflies are among the fastest flying insects in the world and have large eyes to survey their surroundings, they're also good at eluding predators like swallows, which have reportedly been spotted more in Chicago as well.

The dragonfly swarms likely will stick around until the insects begin migrating in the fall.