What Do Dragonflies Eat?
All dragonflies are carnivorous. Their diet is as varied as to whatever the opportunity presents and their body size can handle. Dragonflies commonly eat flying insects including mosquitoes, black flies, butterflies, and moths, as well as other dragonflies and damsels.
Dragonflies generally prefer airborne prey. Damselflies generally snatch perched insects. Eastern Pondhawks seem particularly fond of black flies and often follow people, deer, and bears using them as bait to draw in the biting flies.
Naiads eat aquatic insects and their larvae, small fish, and tadpoles.
Female Eastern Pondhawk eating a black fly. Northern Pygmy Clubtail eating a Bluet damselfly
