Dancing dropwings are by no means the prettiest of dragonflies, lacking the electric pink of Trithemis aurora as well as the indigo hues of Trithemis festiva. Though markedly larger than its native congeners and, like them, a creature of open habitats, Trithemis pallidinervis probably eludes lazy eyes by melting into the grassy expanses and treeless greenways that line municipal reservoirs and coastal parks. Clad in pale brown and yellow with thin black stripes, and held aloft by largely hyaline wings through which skylight is broken into cells of gold, the insects can appear as untidy extensions of the reeds and sedges they favour as perches, to which they cling with spidery legs with their tails to the sun and faces to the breeze.
Like most of their family, these libellulids greet life in the slow lane, hatching in sluggish streams and weedy ponds to hunt aquatic prey with stealth and minute savagery. The final stage of their lives, however, is a departure on two fronts: from the wells of their youth and in a quiet embrace of wanderlust that sweeps the imagos far from their cradles to fresh yards and offshore pastures. Apart from the central and western catchment zones, they have reached the grasslands of Semakau Landfill, Kranji's unruly farms, the shrinking fields of East Coast Park and isolated gardens in the city's secondary heartlands. There was one on the tip of a snakeweed in the grounds of a vegetarian lodge off Balestier Road, a fleeting streak in a house of slumber, where an old man with a head of lore and his heart in the past offers glimpses of the future to a host that gathers for an annual feast and a tribute to expired spirits. The species also holds court throughout much of the oriental tropics, with outposts in the near east, Taiwan and the Philippines. In Singapore, it is not regarded as common, but where they occur, the dropwings are seldom alone, sharing their twigs and blades with slender skimmers, common scarlets and scarlet baskers, as well as blue sprites, black-tipped perchers and common clubtails. In these arenas of light and harshness, a gallery of odes swings into action when the day breaks and the marshland, shorn of its wilder side by the thud of posh clubs, beckons with a whirl of thrills, a stage of bright darts and beaming colours that give chase to the wind and cruise over the water in a game of silent throes and untethered capers.
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