Widow Skimmer

I've mentioned in the past that the Common Whitetail was one of the 1st dragonflies I learned to recognize. Today's featured dragonfly - the Widow Skimmer - was probably one of the 1st dragonflies that I confused with the Common Whitetail.

The males do have things in common:
  1. They're both robust-looking skimmer dragonflies.
  2. They both (when mature) have prominent white pruinose on their abdomens.
  3. They both have black spots on mostly translucent wings.
And even though I could see that some of the dragonflies had wings with basal black spots rimmed with white while the other had black spots near the center of the wings, early on it was unclear whether these were variations within the same species versus different dragonflies entirely.

Though the white on the wings indicates this is a male, there isn't a lot of white pruinose on the abdomen, suggesting this is a not-quite-mature male. (More discussion on males/females/juveniles is here.)

June 8, 2022 at Duke Farms
Photo 209834914, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)


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