Perched Common Whitetail

Here's 1 of our more common and distinctive dragonflies, a Common Whitetail. Though probably average-sized by length and wingspan, they're robust-looking and eye-catching enough that you might be fooled into considering them to be on the large side. 

I think this is the 1st dragonfly I learned to recognize. Or at least the male Common Whitetails were; the females look quite a different from the males but look quite a bit like the Twelve-spotted Skimmer females. (I don't know if Common Whitetails ever double-date with Twelve-spotted Skimmers and the males forget which date is theirs [1].)

Although I've heard of naturalists who've been bitten by dragonflies, we're not even close to what they consider to be prey. I didn't follow up with the bitee, but I've wondered whether he had been handling the dragonfly and the dragonfly took exception to this.

May 25, 2023 at Duke Farms
Photo 292816739, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

[1] On the other hand, if a Twelve-spotted Skimmer couple was double-dating with an Eight-spotted Skimmer couple, things could get confusing. Those 2 species are known to hybridize where their ranges overlap.

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