Widow Skimmer

Widow Skimmer

The widow skimmer is large skimmer that is found through out most of the eastern half of North America, although they have expanded their range to the Pacific Coast in recent years. They are most often found around ponds or other still bodies of water, especially the males who often patrol a territory around the water waiting for a receptive female.
Females often spend time away from the water, especially right after they emerge, because copulation can be dangerous. The widow skimmer above is either a female or possibly an immature male. Males look similar to females when they emerge but as time passes they develop a powdering substance called pruinose that covers most of their thorax and abdomen making them look blue.

Widow Skimmer

Widow skimmers are great dragonflies to work with to practice your macro skills They frequently perch at the top of a stick or a blade of grass and give you enough time to get off a couple of pics. Even if they get startled and fly off they will often return to the same perch or at least a spot nearby.

Widow skimmers are also very colorful with both male and female having large black wing patches. In the two photos above the top one is a male. The male is identified by the white wing patches near the ends of the wings. Notice the female in the second photo just has the black wing patches and no white. The male in the first photo has most likely emerged rather recently. I can tell this because he still has yellow stripes showing at the end of his abdomen. As widow skimmer males age their abdomen gets covered with a chalky substance called pruinose. This will eventually cover the side spots and make the whole abdomen appear a slate blue color.

Widow Skimmer

Widow Skimmer

The widow skimmer dragonfly is a member of the skimmer family. It can be found through out most of the summer around permanent ponds, lakes, and marshes. Usually you see them perched on the end of stick, reed or weed waiting to ambush its prey.

This is a mature male widow skimmer. Mature males can be identified by the white bands on the wings and the blue grey abdomen. Immature males look similar to females with just the black stripes on the wings and a yellow and black abdomen. As they age the abdomen of the male is coated with a dusky powdering substance called pruinose which gives it the color that you see in the photos above.

Widow Skimmer

Widow Skimmer Macro Monday

The skimmer, or Libelleulidae, family of dragonflies is the largest in North America. There are over 100 different type of skimmers found in North America and over 1000 world wide. Here in my area we have around 28 different types of skimmers.

When most overage people think of dragonflies they usually think of skimmers. Skimmers are typically stout dragons that are very colorful. Many have stripes or other colored patterns on their wings. They are pond dragons so they are usually found around stagnant ponds or pools.
One of the most common and most recognizable skimmers is the widow skimmer. They have a unique wing pattern with the base of the wing, up until the nodus, shaded black. In males the remainder of the wing turns white due to pruinose, a powdery white substance that covers parts of certain types of dragonflies as they age. Females, as you can see in the first couple of pics are mostly yellow and black and are not affected by pruinose.

Wordless Wednesday: Widow Skimmer

Widow Skimmers at Fort Snelling

The dragonfly that I photographed the most at Fort Snelling Back in late July was the widow skimmer.
The male widow skimmer above is probably a little older then the one below. As the males age whitish pruinose covers the abdomen, since the one above has more white on the abdomen it stands to reason that it is older.
The females are yellow in color and do not get the outer white bands on their wings. Their abdomen also does not change white with pruinose.
Widow skimmers got their name because the female typically lays the eggs on her own. With most other types of dragons the male will guard the female while she lays the eggs so that no other male will mate with her until after she has laid the eggs which he has fertilized.
With widow skimmers an order of dominance is established by the males with in a population. Females will try and choose a male that is as high in the order as possible for mating.

They Had Dragonflies at Purgatory Creek Too

Since most of Purgatory Creek Park consists of wetlands there were quite a few dragonflies around back in July. So while I was exploring the mud flats, as well as the rest of the park, I took a few dragon pics.
Like this male widow skimmer. This one looked like it had quite a bit of pruinose on the tale which is an indication that this was a mature dragon.
I was also a bit surprised to find a variegated meadowhawk. We do not see as many of this type then we do many of the other types of meadowhawks. When we do see them it is usually in the spring when they migrate north in large group or in the fall when they migrate east. Since this was late July it was a bit uncommon to see one.
Here is a better view of the variegated meadowhawk. The red color indicates that this is a male. The females are usually more of a yellow, mustard type color with a similar pattern on the abdomen.

The Rest of the Dragons at the Bass Ponds

There were also a few other types of dragonfly that I photographed on my trip to the Bass Ponds back in July.
The twelve spotted skimmer is one of the most common dragons around. It is easily recognized, by the spots on the wings, and usually perches in the open making them easy to photograph. An added bonus is that if they flush when approached they will typically land back on the same perch or one near by.
The common whitetail male is also pretty hard to mistake. The wing pattern along with the white pruinose abdomen make them recognizable from a pretty good distance away. The female common whitetail looks a lot like a female twelve-spotted skimmer.

Another common pond dragon that is a member of the skimmer family is the widow skimmer.
Widow skimmers are identified by the black and the white pruinose bands on their wings. The female widow skimmer only has the black band and does not get pruinose on the wings or abdomen.
One dragon that was not as common as the rest, that I was able to photograph that day, is the eastern amberwing. These small dragons are usually less then an inch long and prefer still or slow moving water.
This was a male eastern amberwing, you can tell because the wings are completely colored. The female amberwing has a wing pattern that is similar to the Halloween pennant, although they are quite a bit smaller.
The final dragon that I photographed was the four-spotted skimmer. This type of dragon can be found all over the globe including North America, Europe, North Africa and Asia.

Dragonflies at Wood Lake Nature Center

Wood Lake Nature Center is located in the heart of Richfield, MN, which is a southern suburb of Minneapolis. The lake itself is very shallow and has to be dredged in the past. These are pretty good conditions for dragonflies so I am always on the look out while I am there for some dragon pics.
Back in the middle of July I found a few dragons. The first one, pictured above, is a great face shot but the angle makes it difficult for me to ID it. Maybe if I had some more experience I would not have problems but this is only my second summer photographing dragons. I believe that it may be a juvenile female blue dasher but I am not 100% sure. The juvenile females are brown with yellow markings on the thorax and abdomen. As the male and female age their abdomen turns blue with pruinose.
This dragon is definitely a male twelve-spotted skimmer. We know that he is male because the pattern of the spots on the wings as well as the white spots, which the females do not have. He has probably been around for a while because his abdomen has turned blue with pruinosity.
This female widow skimmer also looks like she has been around a while, at least in dragonfly terms which is measured in days or possibly weeks. You can see the age in her wings. The male widow skimmer has white bands on the wings located just outside the black patches at the base.

Bass Ponds Dragonfly Mating

The Bass Ponds is always a good place to look for dragonflies. BP consists of trails around a series of small ponds, these ponds where once used for producing fish to stock lakes in the area. Between the tails and the ponds there is a good deal of grass, weeds, milkweed and other pond vegetation. On one pond there is a small boardwalk that goes out to a viewing platform in the pond and the Minnesota River runs along the eastern border of the park.
The dot-tailed whiteface is one of the dragons that I photographed a lot early in the summer.

I caught this pair in the wheel position. This is how dragonflies and damselflies mate. So I guess you could call this dragon fornification.
Another dragon that was fairly common that day was the four-spotted skimmer. These larger dragons are named for the four spots on each pair of wings.
Four-spotted skimmers are found in many places around the world. Besides most of North America they can also be found in Europe, Northern Africa and even Japan. They like to perch on twigs or other taller vegetation and wait to ambush prey, which even includes mid-sized dragons like meadowhawks.
The widow skimmer is another larger dragon that prefers to perch on twigs or reeds waiting for prey. They are usually found in established ponds, rivers and lakes and shy away from seasonal ponds.
According to Kurt Mead, in his book Dragonflies of the North Woods, widow skimmers spend the night hanging beneath overarching leaves. Dragonflies of the North Woods is a great book if you want to go dragon hunting in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, or parts of southern Canada. It is specifically meant for the northern part of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, however I have only found one dragonfly in southern Minnesota that I did not find in the book, so I certainly recommend the book and use it all the time myself for identification and research.

Dragons at Carlos Avery

There were also quite a few dragonflies at Carlos Avery that weekend, bad for mosquitoes, good for me, although we could have used a few more of the larger types to help with the run away deer fly population.
The dot-tailed white face is fairly common in this area. They are one of the first dragonflies that we see in the late spring and are usually around until October.
The frosted whiteface are typically only found in the Great Lakes and the North East.

Their preferred habitat is vegetated ponds or lakes especially ones with a lot of floating sphagnum moss.
They typically hunt by perching on vegetation and waiting for their prey.

Female frosted whiteface looks much different then the male with only the white face and black abdomen sections looking the same in both male and female.

Although their habitat is typically around water I found most of these frosted white face in a small section of short grass near an intersection of two road. There is plenty of green ponds, pools and flowages in Carlos Avery so water is never too far away but I was surprised that these dragons seemed to prefer this open grass.
At first glance I thought that this was another frosted whiteface as I spotted him facing away sitting on the ground, but on closer examination I identified this dragon as a chalk-fronted corporal. The white on the front portion of the thorax is what gave it away, notice the male frosted whitefaces above have a black front thorax. The white front thorax is how the chalk-fronted corporal got its name, as they resemble corporal stripes. Another dead give away if you see one from the front is the lack of a white face. Chalk-fronted corporals like to hunt from a perch on the ground as shown above.
As usual there were quite a few twelve-spotted skimmers about. I am guessing that this one is a female because the males typically white areas between the dark spots on their wings.
Another dragon that typically hunts by perching on vegetation is the widow skimmer. This widower is a female. Males are typically a dusky blue with white patches that follow the black patches on the wing. Immature widowers look a lot like the female however the female usually have a black ting at the tip of their wings.