We Netted 41,206 Insects In Nine Days. Nine Of Them Were Not Insects.
Warm rains put dragonflies over eleven sites in the Central Valley this month. Our field correspondent worked the swarms with a hand net and recovered nine machines: 78-millimetre span, 1.9 grams, four driven wings, no maker's mark.
A months-long reporting project. Documents cited below are held in The Vault and available to readers.
LOS BAÑOS, California — On 14 August, on a canal reach outside Gustine, a hand net came out of a dragonfly swarm with something in it that weighed 1.9 grams.
A large California darner weighs about a gram and a half. The difference is what got it looked at.
By 20 August there were nine of them. Over the same nine days the same three people netted, tallied and released 41,206 insects, which is the number this newspaper would like printed first.
What they are
Each unit is 78 millimetres across the wings and 61 millimetres nose to tail. The body is a polymer we have not identified. The wings are four, independently hinged, and the hinges are driven — there is a mechanism at each root, visible in the scans, and it is not a passive joint.
There is a cell. On seven of the nine it is flat. On Unit 6 it held four per cent.
At the base of the left compound eye there is an aperture eight tenths of a millimetre across, with something behind it that the tomography renders as three stacked elements.
There is no mark of any kind. No serial, no moulding number, no regulatory stamp, no maker.
Why this is not a new idea
An intelligence agency built a dragonfly-shaped aircraft in the 1970s, said so afterwards, and put it in a museum. The device is public. It was abandoned because it could not hold a course in a crosswind.
So the question a reader should ask is not whether anybody would try this. It is whether anybody kept trying, and this newspaper cannot tell you who. What we can tell you is that nine of them came out of a sorting frame in Merced County in August.
The one we broke
Unit 1 no longer exists in a condition anybody can examine.
It was opened on the night of 14 August, in a motel room, with a craft knife, by a correspondent who had been awake for nineteen hours and wanted to know. The shell parted at a seam and the internal frame came with it. What is left is in an evidence bag with the fragments, photographed, and it is not evidence of anything any more.
The other eight have not been opened and will not be until somebody with the right bench agrees to do it with our camera running. Two universities have said no. The scans of Units 2 and 4 were done without cutting.
The two nobody has
The state entomologist told us, unprompted and on the record, that objects of this description have come into her office twice before — in 2019 and 2023, from farmworkers, from within thirty kilometres of the Gustine reach.
She logged them as hobby drone debris, because that is the box on the form, and they were thrown out at the end of the season.
Her full reply is printed below and it is the most useful thing on this page. She thinks we have written a surveillance story on evidence that supports a litter rate, and she says so in detail, and on the specific question of whether these things fly she is right and we cannot answer her.
What this desk takes from it
Nine manufactured objects were sitting in an ordinary insect count that nobody had ever run in this valley, in this way, at this scale.
They were not hidden. They were in a swarm, which is the same thing.
The tally sheets, the scan volumes, the video of Unit 6's wing, the two declination letters and the photographs of what is left of Unit 1 are published with this story. If a reader can identify the polymer, the hinge mechanism or the aperture stack, this newspaper would like to hear from them, and will print what it is told even if what it is told is that these are a toy.
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Sources & Method
This began as a weather story. Warm spring rain across the Central Valley produced the largest odonate emergence the county has logged since 2011, and this newspaper sent a field correspondent to count it. The counting is the method: swarms were sampled with a standard 40cm hand net under permits from the agricultural commissioner, passed through a sorting frame, tallied by hand and released. Three people counted for nine days. The nine units came out of the sorting frame with everything else, and the first one was noticed because it was the wrong weight.
Who we spoke to
- Dr. Reyna Oduya-Balfour, State entomologist. Interviewed by video call twice, then in person at her office with the units on the desk 17 and 22 August 2026 Identified the odonates. Disputes our framing at length under Right of Reply.
- Yolanda Prischke-Nakamura, Agricultural commissioner's office, Merced County. Issued the netting permits and accompanied us on two days 12–20 August 2026 Confirms the tally sheets were kept in her presence at the Gustine and Kesterson sites.
- A metrology laboratory, Zurich, Micro-computed tomography. Scanned Units 2 and 4 without opening them; full scan volumes published with this story 23 August 2026 Will not be named. Asked us not to describe the interior beyond what the scans show, and we have not.
- Two university entomology departments, Approached to examine the units independently. Written approach with photographs and provenance; both declined 21–24 August 2026 Both declinations are published in full. One is a form. One is three paragraphs and worth reading.
- Field tally sheets and net logs, Nine days, eleven sites, three counters. Kept in the field in pencil, photographed nightly, published entire 12–20 August 2026
What we could not confirm
- That any of them flies. All nine were recovered inert, from vegetation, water margins and one radiator grille. We have never seen one in the air and we are not going to write as though we have.
- Who made them. There is no mark, no serial, no moulding number and no fastener we recognise. We monitored three bands for forty hours at two of the sites and detected nothing we could attribute to them.
- What Unit 6 did on 22 August. It held four per cent of a charge, and under a bench lamp its left forewing moved through roughly fifteen degrees, twice, six minutes apart. Both events are on video. We have not been able to make it happen again in three days of trying, and one of us thinks it was thermal.
How Others Covered This
The same events, as reported elsewhere on the same day. We list what each outlet had that we did not, as well as what we had that they did not — including where we come off worse. Why we print this.
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The Meridian TelegraphTHE SKY OVER CALIFORNIA IS FULL OF ROBOT INSECTS
Ran our figures within a day and multiplied them by the estimated size of the swarms.
Had that we did not
The nine units, correctly described, with our own photographs credited.
Left out
The denominator. Nine in 41,206 is not a sky full of anything, and the arithmetic that turned it into four hundred thousand machines is printed nowhere in the piece.
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ApertureThe Insect That Was Watching Us Back
Three thousand words on the dragonfly as a figure in myth, ending with our find as a coda.
Had that we did not
A genuinely good passage on why an insect is the perfect shape to be ignored.
Left out
Every number in this story. The essay does not say how many were netted, how many were machines, or where.
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They Buriedthis newspaperWe Netted 41,206 Insects In Nine Days. Nine Of Them Were Not Insects.
Counted the ones that were insects too, and printed that number first.
Had that we did not
The eight sites that produced nothing, at the same size as the three that did.
Left out
That we destroyed Unit 1 learning how to open it, in a motel room, with a craft knife, at half past one in the morning, before anyone had photographed its underside. That is not fieldwork. That is impatience with a licence. — V. Ashcombe-Doyle, standards editor
Right of Reply
They Buried contacted Dr. Reyna Oduya-Balfour, state entomologist read the full draft and handled all nine units; given six days. Asked that her reply run whole. Printed unedited.
I have held these objects. They are manufactured. I am not going to be the scientist in your story who says otherwise, and I would ask you to notice that I am the one who put them under my own stereoscope and not the one who declined your letter.
Now the disagreement.
You have written a story about surveillance and you have not established a single element of it. You have not shown that these things fly. You have not shown that they were in the swarm rather than in the ditch the swarm was over. You have not shown that they are recent; polymer that has sat in Central Valley sun for four seasons looks very like polymer that has sat in it for one. Nine manufactured objects recovered from eleven sites in an agricultural landscape that has been saturated with hobby aircraft, crop-monitoring equipment, university tag studies and children's toys for fifteen years is a litter rate. It is a very interesting litter rate. It is not a fleet.
What I will give you, because you asked me a direct question and I am not going to be coy about the answer, is this. Objects of this general description have been brought into this office twice before, in 2019 and in 2023, both times by farmworkers, both times from irrigation reaches within thirty kilometres of your Gustine site. I logged both as hobby drone debris. I logged them that way because that is the category on the form, and because the alternative was to invent a category, and inventing a category on a state form is a thing that gets noticed in an audit and is not a thing that gets you an answer.
I did not keep them. They went in the bin at the end of the season with everything else. If you want to be angry at something in this story, be angry at that, and then be aware that I am the only person in it who has told you about the two you cannot have.
Published unedited under our right-of-reply guarantee.
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