Mike Powell

On Monday I finally spotted some mature male Calico Pennant dragonflies (Celithemis elisa) with red markings at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Heretofore all of the males that I had seen this year were immature and had yellow markings, like those of their female counterparts.

The first two photos show male Calico Pennants. I love the way that the red marking on the abdomen look like a series of tiny hearts. The dragonfly in the third photo is an immature male—you can tell that it is a male by looking at the shape of the tip of the abdomen (the “tail”).

For the sake of comparison, I have added a final photo of a female Calico Pennant from a posting I did in May 2020. You can readily see that the dragonflies in the last two photos are similar in coloration, but you have to look a bit closer at them to see that the wing patterns are slightly different and the shapes of the terminal appendages are quite different.

Most of us tend to rely on colors for identifying species of birds and insects, but I have learned over time that color is often not a reliable identification feature, especially for immature subjects, when the males and females are often similar in color and the color differentiation becomes apparent only when they mature.

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.