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blue-faced meadowhawk
blue-faced meadowhawk (Sympetrum ambiguum) [male]
Photo © Mary Kay Rubey
Features and Behaviors
FEATURES
Notably, blue-faced meadowhawk males are recognizably the only red dragonflies with bright blue faces. Males have pale-blue eyes with a brown above, and a white face overlaid with turquoise blue, sometimes appearing green or white in older individuals. The male and female thorax is mostly grey with faint brown stripes and pale appendages. The male abdomen is red with black rings starting on the fourth segment, widening on each segment to cover the entire ninth segment. Females have brown over grey eyes with a tan face. The female abdomen is tan, though sometimes red in a small proportion of individuals, with black spots starting on the third segment and enlarging towards the tail end, covering most of the eighth and ninth segement.
BEHAVIOR
Both males and females perch in trees at the woodland edge or in the forest. Males perch low around the edges of shallow pools and drying ponds. Females lay eggs by dropping them in the grass or on mud, while the male hovers or perches nearby as a guard. They like permanent and temporary ponds, in or out of the woodlands, and some wooded streams. Most often observed in wooded habitats, but also regulars at the edges of Atlantic Coastal marshes. They range from the southern three-quarters of Illinois and south to the Gulf Coast and the panhandle of north Florida, extending west from Kansas to Texas, with one record in Nebraska.
Illinois Range
Taxonomy
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Odonata
Family: Libellulidae
Illinois Status: common, native
