Friday, January 29, 2010

Saffron-winged Meadowhawk

This is a female saffron-winged meadowhawk. The identifying characteristic is the gold or saffron color of the veins on the leading edge of each wing. If you look carefully, especially on the photo below, you can see that some of the other wing veins are also gold colored.
Other things to look for when identifying saffron-winged dragons are a solid colored stigma and yellow and black striped legs. Females and immature males are a golden color, like those pictured here, while mature males are primarily red, including their stigma. I photographed this dragon near the Old Cedar Ave Bridge in the Minnesota Valley NWR in October.

12 comments:

KaHolly said...

She is a beauty! I find meadowhawks so difficult to identify! But I enjoy the challenge. My only problem is "remembering".

eileeninmd said...

Beautiful, love the golden color on the meadowhawk. Great sighting and capture!

sweetbay said...

Beautiful dragonfly, I love those eyes. She looks like she's been painted with gold lustre.

This Is My Blog - fishing guy said...

EB: Neat shot of the dragonfly and a good explanation on the identity.

??? said...

Lovely shots. I'm always glad that they are so small, though ;)

Helena said...

Very cool photos!

Judith @ Lavender Cottage said...

Very beautiful colouring on the meadowhawk. There are so many related species, I have a hard time identifying what I photograph.

Ladynred said...

It's beautiful dragonfly. thanks for the info!

Chicken'hens

Lisa said...

Very nice photos!

DeniseinVA said...

Super photos of the dragonflies.

Rechie said...

wow..what a lovely dragon fly and it was captured beautifully...

mine's a bird

Self Sagacity said...

I love dragon flies, especially how you've captured this one. It's magnificent.