ID a Darter please

[Rambling Rob]

Sorry this is a (not very good) pic taken on the beach at Luccombe Bay, IoW, last September but it would be great to know which species of dragonfly these are - Red Darter, would you say? Probably I am imagining that the veins look sort of reddish..



Thanks for looking,

Rob

[wint]

Hi Rob

It's a pair of Common Darters.

HTH

[Rambling Rob]

Thank you HTH.
Now you've told me I can see how it tallies with some features I've just looked up: black inside yellow dot towards rear of each abdom. segment on the male, and yellow stripes on legs.

Rob

[RoyW]

Hi Rob,

You might have found these easier to identify if you had photographed them in August! As Common Darters age the sides of the thorax, and the legs, often become darker which means they can lose the yellow stripes that would otherwise identify them. In this pair the female is perhaps the easiest one to seperate from Ruddy Darter (the opposite from usual!).

Roy.

[Rambling Rob]

Hi Roy,

Thanks for that advice. I was a bit thrown by the markings. I'm only just starting to look at the odonata and finding them quite variable.
Damselflies I was watching a couple of days ago seemed to change dramatically just with a shift in the light as clouds moved - some weird and wonderful pigments involved, no doubt.

Rob

[wint]

Hi Rob

There's this pic in the Gallery of a male Red-veined giving an idea of how much redder the veins are (plus the red over blue eyes - the blue is only just visible and the pale pterostigmas)



Paul

[Rambling Rob]

Cheers Paul,

That's astonishing - I think I'll know now if I see one of those.

Rob