Thursday, June 28, 2012

Odes of orange

A couple of orange dragonflies have made decent photo opportunities lately.  These are mating Halloween Pennants in nice early morning light.

I'm not sure what these next ones are.  I'm sure they're meadowhawks, but I'm not sure what one.  Ruby, White-faced, and Cherry-faced can all apparently be very similar.  This is a female I spotted recently at Riverview Park (with a hint of a white face?):
As I was taking its picture Hazel spotted a second one and netted it with her first pass, it's a little paler than the first one:
White-faced is supposed to have black legs, this female's hind legs certainly aren't black at the base of the "thighs," but perhaps that's also due to immaturity.

I went back today and netted a male. I was hoping by today they'd be redder and closer to adult appearance; no such luck.
Each of these three individuals has a bit of orange at the base of the wings.  Per Paulson, Cherry-faced has this the farther west you go, as does Ruby in similar ranges.  White-faced "may" have this, but he doesn't mention any specific locale.
Finally a montage of pics of their small parts; I didn't have a ton of luck matching the photo to the diagrams in the book.
I'm not sure if the fact that they're not red means that they're still working on their genitalia as well, or if they're ID-able in this stage to more experienced eyes.  To me the male looks closest to Cherry-faced and the female to Ruby.

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