Meadowhawk

Sympetrum sp. · Dragonflies & damselflies

Meadowhawk, head-on

Upstate New York, 17 August 2025

A red meadowhawk perched dead centre on a seed head in an Upstate meadow, facing the lens. Meadowhawks are the late-summer dragonflies of the northern meadows and pond edges, and a seed head in the open sun is a typical hunting perch.

Head-on shows what a dragonfly's head mostly is: two compound eyes so large they meet on top, each with something like thirty thousand facets, giving it close to a full sphere of vision. It can see you coming from behind. The red is a mature male; the females and young are yellow-brown, and several near-identical species share the colour.

Meadowhawk

Upstate New York, 15 August 2025

A mature male meadowhawk in an Upstate meadow in August, the whole body flushed deep red. Meadowhawks are the dragonflies of late summer across the north, breeding in ponds and marshes and hunting the meadows around them, and they are often the last dragonfly seen before the frosts.

Several similar species share this exact colouring, and separating them reliably usually needs a close look at the legs and the hamules under the abdomen, neither visible in a shot like this.

Red dragonfly on a ridge

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.