Mike Powell

Most of the Widow Skimmer dragonflies (Libellula luctuosa) that I have seen this season have been immature males, like the one in the second photo below that I spotted on Wednesday at Occoquan Regional Park. When they are that young, their colors and wing markings match those of their female siblings.

As they mature, however, the males develop the additional white patches on their wings that are simply spectacular, like those of the mature male Widow Skimmer in the first photo that I spotted later that same day. Their bodies also turn blue and with varying degrees of pruinosity, the dusty looking coating on their abdomens that gives them a frosted look. (According to the Educalingo website, the word pruinose comes “from Latin pruīnōsus frost-covered, from pruīna hoarfrost.”)

We have moved into the lazy days of the summer, when dragonflies are now a frequent sight at most of the ponds in our area. Hopefully you are seeing them too. Most of those dragonflies are probably from the skimmer family, a large group of dragonflies in which many species tend to be habitat generalists. I will certainly be photographing lots of skimmers, but will also be keeping an eye out for more uncommon species, like the Cyrano Darner that I featured yesterday.

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Things are not always as they seem. When I spotted this Widow Skimmer dragonfly (Libellula luctuosa) last Friday at the edge of a pond in Fairfax County, I thought for a moment that it might be a female. After all, females have yellow and brown bodies and have one large dark blotch per wing, while males have blue bodies and have one dark and one light blotch per wing.

However, immature male Widow Skimmers look a lot like females, as is the case with many dragonfly species. The colors of “fresh” dragonflies tend to be pale and wing patterns may not have developed fully yet, so you cannot rely exclusively on those markings for identification.

The first photo below provides a pretty clear view of the “claspers” at the tip of the abdomen, which indicates that this is a male—the terminal appendages are often the most important indication of the gender of a dragonfly. For comparison purposes I have included a photo of a mature male Widow Skimmer at this same location from a 2019 posting entitled Male Widow Skimmer dragonfly. It may be a little hard to envision, but the dragonfly in the first photo will eventually grow to look like the one in the second image.

You may wonder why this species is called a “Widow Skimmer.” Someone apparently thought the dark patches on the wings looked like the mourning crepe that historically widows wore. Even the Latin name “luctuosa” means “sorrowful.”

I used to hesitate a bit when I used the the words male and widow together, wondering if perhaps I should call a male of this species a Widower Skimmer. Over time I have gotten used to this seeming incongruity and now I even happily speak about male damselflies. I wonder how those guys feel about being called damsels.

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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