Netta Smith and I visited REGUA for almost two weeks in late October to enjoy the pleasant atmosphere of the lodge and the wildlife of the area, but our special purpose was to look for dragonflies and damselflies. Tom Kompier has done a superb job of surveying the area, but you just about have to look at every wetland of every kind to find all the members of the order Odonata, so new species are always possible.

On October 24, we visited a tiny, densely vegetated pond by the abandoned house on the Waldenoor Trail and found Lestes pictus, a new species for REGUA. This beautiful spreadwing damselfly is known from relatively few records from Peru, Argentina and southern Brazil (Mato Grosso, Espirito Santo, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo).

Male Lestes have a pale blue or grey abdomen tip, but in almost all species the colour comes from a powdery bloom called pruinosity. In Lestes pictus, the colour is instead a reflected blue like that of many other damselfly species.

We encountered 78 species of Odonata during our visit, not even half of the species known from the area, but still a very impressive list for a short visit at the end of the dry season.