Blue-Eyed Goldenring
(Cordulegaster insignis)

The Blue-Eyed Goldenring (Cordulegaster insignis) occurs in the Balkans, Romania and some Greek islands (e.g. Lesbos and Samos). The species seems to exhibit a great deal of variation within its range, but our only experience of it to date is with the typical, blue-eyed form. Even though it's a member of the Bidentata complex, it looks very different from that species; not only are its eyes blue rather than green, it's also a lot bigger than C. bidentata and makes a very light, yellow impression in the field. What it does seem to share with bidentata is a dislike of bright sunshine and a certain skittishness. We saw the species flying together with the much more trusting Turkish Goldenring (Cordulegaster picta) and the difference in behaviour was quite obvious. The female Cordulegaster insignis stay away from the water and only come down to lay their eggs (in the typical pneumatic drill fashion). On one occasion and in the space of an hour we saw four females come down to oviposit, each taking ten minutes or so to complete the job. They all did so under the cover of the dense vegetation in the stream and they all managed to finish their business undetected by the numerous males patrolling nearby. Photographs of copulas therefore remain on our wish list.

For an overview of the Blue-Eyed Goldenring's distribution in Europe, hover your mouse pointer over the map symbol .
With the authors' permission we have based this map on data published in Kalkman et al. (2010).
Legend: Red = Occurs, White = Doesn't occur; Purple = Extinct; Yellow = Vagrant.

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