Dragonfly hunter
Location: Sydney Australia
March 9, 2011 11:57 pm
Dear bugman,can you please identify this
fearsome looking dragenfly hunter ,I found in my garden this morning?
King Regards
Signature: Katja
Robber Fly eats Dragonfly
Hi Katja,
The Robber Fly in your photo looks like an especially large specimen, and large Robber Flies are capable of snatching large flying prey on the wing. They are formidable hunters. We believe we have properly identified your Robber Fly as the Common Yellow Robber Fly, Ommatius sp., by comparing your photos to those posted on the Insects of Brisbane website.
Dragonfly Species??
Location: Buxton, Maine USA
January 24, 2011 1:17 pm
I found this dragonfly in my mother’s garden in Buxton, Maine USA. I looked through all the dragonfly posts you had on this site but could not find one that looked just like it. Can you identify the species? Thank you!
Signature: Cheryl Mitchell
Darner
Hi Cheryl,
It seems whenever we attempt to identify a Dragonfly, someone writes in to correct us. For some reason, Dragonflies are a real identification challenge for us. We believe this is a Darner in the family Aeshnidae. See BugGuide for the species possibilities.
Darner
¶ Posted 25 January 2011 § ‡ ° Dragonhunter Exuvia?
Location: Rangeley Lake, Rangeley, Maine USA
January 24, 2011 8:19 am
I found this exuvia on a dock at Rangeley Lake in Rangeley Maine USA. Does it belong to the Dragonhunter Dragonfly nymph? I look forward to solving this mystery. My husband was holding it in the palm of his hand when I took the picture. It was about two inches long. Can you tell us what kind of bug it is? Thank you. Thank you!
Signature: Cheryl Mitchell
Dragonhunter Exuvia
Hi Cheryl,
Apparently you emailed your photos to at least one friend who submitted an identification request a day earlier and signed the request “Not sure”, beating you to both a response and a posting to our site. Since you submitted two images, and “Not sure” only submitted one photo, we can create a new posting and include your second image which provides a nice sense of scale. We gave a slightly snotty response during our response to “Not sure” due to the lack of relevant information that was provided. You are correct that this is a Dragonhunter exuvia. We did not realize that this was the exuvia, a name given to the cast off exoskeleton that remains when an insect molts during metamorphosis. Thank you for providing that clarification.
Thank you very much for your prompt response. Yes, please create a new posting to include both of the images I submitted of the Dragonhunter exuvia.
Sincerely,
Cheryl Mitchell
What is it?
Location: Maine
January 23, 2011 7:13 pm
A friend took this photo and we can not identify it…can you help?
Signature: Not sure
Dragonhunter
Dear Not sure,
Luckily for us, there was a field on our submission form for a location, or we might have gotten no useful information from your email. Did your friend find this creature in the kitchen? or during one of the snowstorms that is currently blanketing much of the northeast? or as we suspect, in a lake last summer? This is a Dragonhunter Naiad, the larva of a Dragonfly. You may compare your image to this posting of a photo of a larval Dragonhunter, Hagenius brevistylus, on BugGuide. The Dragonhunter has one of the most distinctive looking Naiads, the name given to all aquatic larvae, of all the North American Dragonflies. According to the Insects of West Virginia website: “Dragonhunters often capture dragonflies nearly their own size” which explains the common name Dragonhunter. According to a University of Michigan web page: “Hagenius brevistylus is most certainly Michigan’s most distinctively shaped odonate larva (Fig. 1). The very flat abdomen is broad, nearly circular in outline, bearing dark mid-dorsal hooks and sharp lateral angles on abdominal segments 2-9. This shape is shared by other gomphid genera in other parts of the world and appears related to the habit of burrowing in leafy trash.“ Over time, the appearance of the larvae may have evolved to mimic dead leaves like elm tree leaves ensuring that predators might overlook the tasty larvae, which then contributes to the survival of the species.
a flying bug of some kind
Location: tacoma, washington, USA
January 21, 2011 6:06 pm
hi bugman, i have a photo of a bug that i have tentatively identified as Plathemis lydia or possibly Libellula pulchella but i’m not sure. i see a lot of blue-eyed darners around, but this is a new one that i’ve not seen before.
Signature: przxqgl
Twelve Spot Skimmer
Dear przxqgl,
We agree with your first choice, Plathemis lydia, the Common Whitetail. According to BugGuide: “Males and females have different wing patterns. Immature males have the same body pattern as females but the same wing pattern as mature males. ‘tween’ males have abdomens that are beginning to turn blue, but the adolescent body pattern still shows through the blue. Mature males have a short, stout abdomen that is completely chalky blue-white covering the adolescent pattern. Females have a short, stout abdomen with several oblique dorsolateral white or pale yellow markings against a brown ground color; each wing has three black evenly-spaced blotches.“ Because of the pictures and descriptions on BugGuide, we would say you have photographed an immature male Common Whitetail.
Correction from a Comment
This is a mature male Libellula pulchella. Twelve-spotted skimmer. 3 dark spots with 2 white patches between is a positive id.
¶ Posted 22 January 2011 § ‡ ° Strange Visitor-Fuschia Colored Dragonfly
Location: Panamá (the country). The photos were taken in Arraijan, a mountain-like area
January 17, 2011 4:18 am
Hi! I read all dragonfly posts I could find but couldn’t identify this dragonfly. We have a rain drain in the back that’s quite like a pond in some places and we get dragonflies (honey colored small ) and damselflies(bluets, mostly) but this one came in one day out of nowhere, in the afternoon. It was quite big, with a striking fuschia tone. The color was so bright it caught my atention 10 meters away. I couldn’t get any closer to it because it sat on the other side of the drain, but if you could try to identify it, I would be very grateful. I’m trying to find out if this strange visitor is natural to the country in which I live.
Signature: Thanks, Lilith
Carmine Skimmer we believe
Hi Lilith,
We believe this may be a Carmine Skimmer, Orthemis discolor. According to BugGuide, the range is: “Central Texas, west into Arizona, south through Central America” and it may be identified because of its coloring which is “Brilliant pink, sometimes purplish, sometimes more red, with bright red eyes and face. Face and eyes typically as brightly colored or brighter than the body; compare to Roseate Skimmer, in which the eyes and face are usually darker than the body.“ That physical description fits the individual in your photograph.
Thank you so much fo the ID.. from what your description says about range, it makes me think a storm brought it close to where I live, because although in summer
it becomes a bit desertic, he/she came in rainy season …
¶ Posted 17 January 2011 § ‡ ° Bug identification.
Location: Diggins, Missouri, under water in a pond.
November 18, 2010 1:39 pm
I was fishing a little while back and caught a rock with a little bug that was living in/on it under the water. It stayed on the rock and didn’t really seem to notice I was holding it, I just ended up taking a picture and putting him back, it looks like a bedbug, I’m having a hard time trying to figure out what it was, it’s ”bugging” me. If you could solve this mystery for me it’d be very appreciated.
Signature: Brad McBandycars
Naiad on a Hook
Hi Brad McBandycars,
You hooked a Naiad, a talent that Ulysses would admire. A Naiad is the aquatic nymph of a flying insect that is usually associated with water. Your Naiad is a young Dragonfly. If the Naiads of Dragonflies are similar to other larvae, they probably undergo 5 molts before becoming adults. The molts are stages known as instars and the adult is called the Imago. We cannot identify the species of Dragonfly you have hooked.
Unknown Dragonfly Naiad
Eastern Pondhawk, we think
Location: Amherstview, Ontario
November 15, 2010 9:16 pm
We found this beautiful dragonfly on our apartment outside wall. We have never seen a dragonfly this big before. We thought you could use another picture for your website.
Signature: big fans of What’s That Bug, Tyler (9 yrs) and Brennen (7 yrs)
Green Darner
Dear Tyler and Brennen,
Thanks so much for sending us your Dragonfly photos, but this is not an Eastern Pondhawk. It is a Green Darner which you can verify by comparing your photo to images posted to BugGuide. According to BugGuide, the Green Darner, Anax junius: “Females oviposit in aquatic vegetation, eggs laid beneath the water surface. Larvae probably take several years to mature. Mature larva crawls up an emergent plant before adult emerges. Adults migrate north in Spring, these do breed in Canada. In the Fall the adults may form swarms and migrate south.“
Thank you so much, you made my children’s day!
¶ Posted 16 November 2010 § ‡ ° 
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