Mating Ebony Jewelwings in CT
Location: Ridgefield, CT
September 25, 2011 10:20 am
How gorgeous are these Jewelwings??
I did not know before seeing this pair and doing a little searching at WTB that these are the male and female, even with the different looks.
What beautiful colors.
Signature: Hellywell

Mating Ebony Jewelwings

Dear Hellywell,
Thanks so much for sending us your wonderful photos of the sexually dimorphic Ebony Jewelwings, Calopteryx maculata, in the act of assuming the mating position.  The complete “wheel” position has not yet been achieved.  The male has the metallic body and the black wings.  The female has gray wings with a white spot at the tip.

Red Veined Darter
Location: Baldwin county Alabama
August 12, 2011 11:35 pm
I didn’t see a picture of a Red Veined Darter when looking through your dragonflies ( I didn’t go through them all, I admit) So I thought I would send this amazing picture my wife took with her iphone when it landed on mine.
Signature: South Alabama bug dude

Alleged Red Veined Darter is Needham's Skimmer

Dear South Alabama bug dude,
We hope your wife knows that you submitted her amazing photo to our website.  We recently grappled with a copyright situation because a photo from the Pennsylvania Wild website was submitted to us for identification purposes without the knowledge of the photo’s originator.  Once a digital photo enters the blogosphere, anything can happen.  Things go viral and there is internet piracy.  Imagery can be transformed and used for advertising purposes.  We cannot help but to wonder if in the very near future we will be teaching photography with a cellular telephone because the cameras are getting better and better and Apple is putting so many features onto the telephone that have nothing to do with making telephone calls.  We have concerns because your wife is obviously a creative individual and she has used a panoramic format and vignetting to add originality to her image.  We cannot say for certain that this is a Red Veined Darter.  We find Dragonfly identifications most challenging.  We are also going to include a cropped and flipped version of the Dragonfly with adjusted levels so that the identifying features of this Dragonfly are less obfuscated.  We cannot link to the Red Veined Darter on BugGuide because it is not represented there, and in our opinion, BugGuide is the best place to identify insects and spiders found in the United States and Canada.  A web search for Red Veined Darter produced a hit to a Dragonfly Site and a scientific name Sympetrum fonscolombii.  A web search of Sympetrum fonscolombii produced a hit to a UK site that lists it as a vagrant, but notes:  “”In Britain this species has been seen annually since 1995. Most have been migrants but breeding has been noted in a number of sites from Cornwall to Yorkshire.”  We believe you have not correctly identified your Dragonfly.  The not so credible Wikipedia has many photos of the Red Veined Darter, and none look like your Dragonfly.
We have now taken up a considerable portion of our allotted time this morning for responding to the web browsing public’s questions on what has become a non-identification.   We promised Elizabeth that we would write her a letter of recommendation  for the U.S. Student Fulbright Program so that she can do a photography project in Russia.  Also the fifteen year old Chinese elm bonsaii grove we have nurtured from seedlings has some species of Scale Insect that are being tended by the dreaded Argentine Ants and we really need to take a toothbrush to it and repot it.  We also need to work on a presentation to the Greater Cypress Park Neighborhood Council to request funding to help control the Tree of Heaven population in Elyria Canyon Park.  Sometimes our editorial staff has obligations (or recreational desires) that have nothing to do with the web browsing public’s insect identification questions and today, those things need to be a priority.

Alleged Red Veined Darter is Needham's Skimmer

Zebra Dragonfly/Moth?
Location: Southwestern Pennsylvania (near Monongahela river)
August 8, 2011 4:30 pm
Found this nifty looking bug outside of my house – he was already comatose when I came upon him, so i put a quarter by him for size comparison and took some pictures… Thanks!
Signature: KatieC

Male Common Whitetail

Hi Katie,
Your Dragonfly is a male Common Whitetail.  Like many Dragonflies, this is a sexually dimorphic species because only the males have the white abdomen, and the wing patterns of the sexes are also different.

0   I like This