24 DRAGONFLIES OF NORTH AMERICA 
good chance of capture. If successful he may be seen to return to his 
perch and to strip off its wings before breaking and swallowing it. 
The smaller hawks, shrikes, cuckoos and flycatchers also eat dragon- 
flies, only less openly. 
The bee-eater, Merops persicus, is said to capture dragonflies with 
the sole purpose of using the wings as a lining for his nest. 
Spiders capture dragonflies in their webs. Oftenest the litle bluets 
(Enallagma) are found enshrouded in their silk; but even the big 
darners are ensnared by some of the orb weavers. The senior author 
found Aeschna multicolor not infrequently in webs of Argiope tri- 
fasciata in Southern California. Large dragonflies also eat the small 
ones. 
Casualties, also, befall dragonflies. Some get accidentally drowned. 
Some (oftenest the bluets) fall afoul of the leaves of sundew (Drosera), 
and are there engulfed and digested. The speeding automobile 
captures some in the front of its radiator. At times they are destroyed 
in large numbers by storms and high winds. A wholesale calamity of 
this sort was once reported by the senior author (’00). Two days 
after a violent storm from the northwest on Lake Michigan, a change 
of wind swept back to the west shore vast numbers of insects which 
had been blown out and had drifted widely on the surface of the lake. 
The dragonflies averaged 49 to each linear meter of the drift line. They 
were chiefly the large strong flying darners (Anax and Aeschna), with 
a few of the skimmers (Libellula pulchella) and a very few of the 
damselflies. While some of the other species of insects survived the 
calamity and reached shore living, although sadly battered, the 
dragonflies without exception had succumbed to the buffeting of 
wind and wave. 
