Whitefaced Dragonfly
We netted this medium-sized dragonfly near the swampy pond in the woods on July 3, 2012. He was still flying, even though one of his hindwings had been almost destroyed in some earlier accident, and two other wings had some serious damage.
He was pretty drably colored overall, but one of his distinctive features was his bright white face.
It looks like he’s one of the Whitefaces in the genus Leucorrhinia. Specifically, I think he’s a Belted Whiteface, Leucorrhinia proxima. These often have some bright red spots and patches around the base of the abdomen, but a lot of them are just in various shades of gray like this one.
I’ve been calling this one “he” because the tip of his abdomen looks more like it is a clasper than an ovipositor, although I could be wrong about that.
So, anyway, I let him go afterwards, and he flew off in spite of his damaged wings. Maybe not flying as efficiently as he might have with intact wings, but still probably good enough to manage. I thing this is kind of a testimony to their flight skills – staying airborne when you’ve lost most of your wing area on one side is no mean feat[1].
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[1] Not unheard-of, though. Like this story about an F-15 that lost a wing in a midair collision, but the pilot was able to land it anyway.
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