Red dragonfly on a ridge
Sympetrum sp.
Meadowhawk · Hokkaido · 21 August 2024
A red darter perched at the top of a ridge in Hokkaido in August, cloud in the valleys below and a lake showing through a gap in the peaks. The akatonbo, the red dragonflies of Japan, breed in the rice paddies of the lowlands and spend the summer up in the hills to escape the heat, coming down again in September to lay.
They turn up all over Japan from late summer and are enough of a seasonal fixture to have their own place in poetry, though there are several similar red Sympetrum species and I wouldn't commit to one from this angle.
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