Libellula lydia

Bob Coutant · May 14, 2007

I have not yet seen any dragonflies around the pond, but I did spot several of these common whitetails in the corner of one field and in the nearby woods. I’d like to have had some better angles, but what you see is what I got. [Why are they called whitetails when the color is actually a very light blue? ]

Male

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Female [Not -- actually immature male]

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mrtac2man · May 13, 2007

these are nice Bob.. guess its time to go check out the local pond here and see whats flying around.. not sure why they call them white tail either.. but again nice shots..

Bob Coutant · May 13, 2007

Thanks Tim. I thought it was too cool, but there was quite a variety of insects in that field.

j.ankanpaa · May 14, 2007

Nice shots, Bob!

Beautiful dragons indeed! About the naming, there´re many different kind of damsels named as bluetails so maybe that´s the reason, just guessing though... Then again it could have been named "common lightbluetail" :smile:

Edit: By the way, I think they´re both males. First is mature and second is immature. Take a look here, look carefully the tips of their tails, there´re obvious differences between male and female:
male http://stephenville.tamu.edu/~fmitchel/dragonfly/Libellulidae/lli2ta.htm
female http://stephenville.tamu.edu/~fmitchel/dragonfly/Libellulidae/lli3ta.htm

And here´s an immature male, so it´s not the coloring thing:
http://stephenville.tamu.edu/~fmitchel/dragonfly/Libellulidae/lli8ta.htm

Bob Coutant · May 14, 2007

j.ankanpaa said: ↑

Nice shots, Bob!

Beautiful dragons indeed! About the naming, there´re many different kind of damsels named as bluetails so maybe that´s the reason, just guessing though... Then again it could have been named "common lightbluetail" :smile:

Edit: By the way, I think they´re both males. First is mature and second is immature. Take a look here, look carefully the tips of their tails, there´re obvious differences between male and female:
male http://stephenville.tamu.edu/~fmitchel/dragonfly/Libellulidae/lli2ta.htm
female http://stephenville.tamu.edu/~fmitchel/dragonfly/Libellulidae/lli3ta.htm

And here´s an immature male, so it´s not the coloring thing:
http://stephenville.tamu.edu/~fmitchel/dragonfly/Libellulidae/lli8ta.htm
Click to expand...

THANKS Jukka. I had noted that the wing markings were different on the female, but decided to go with the difference in coloration -- wrong. Interesting that there was an abundance of mature and immature males in the area -- now I'll have to go back out and hunt for the females:smile: .

j.ankanpaa · May 14, 2007

Bob Coutant said: ↑

THANKS Jukka. I had noted that the wing markings were different on the female, but decided to go with the difference in coloration -- wrong. Interesting that there was an abundance of mature and immature males in the area -- now I'll have to go back out and hunt for the females:smile: .
Click to expand...

LOL! Now that you mentioned the different markings on their wings... it´s REMARKABLE... I didn´t even noticed that, I was so concentrated their tail tips :biggrin:

Yep, and with some species old females look like mature males, so it can be tricky sometimes...

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Libellula lydia

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