Crimson-ringed Whiteface (Leucorrhinia glacialis) - Dragonfly Identification Resources

Crimson-ringed Whiteface dragonfly (Leucorrhinia glacialis)
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011, all rights reserved

Today I learned that there are many, many species of dragonflies. Furthermore, some of them aren't dragonflies at all, but are actually damselflies. Sow when I tried to get an identification on the dragonfly pictured to the left, I ran into some difficulty at first.

Searching for dragonfly identification, even adding in my region was of little help. I searched text and images through Google, but found nothing that brought me much closer to figuring out which dragonfly this might be. Knowing how birds and bugs are often named for a prominent feature, however, I figured that there was a pretty good probability that this particular dragonfly had white-face somewhere in it's name. So a search of white face dragonflies New Hampshire brought me a couple of very good leads.

First was a list of all the dragonflies known to occur in New Hampshire which I found on the New Hampshire Fish and Game  Department's website. It's actually a checklist of dragonflies and damselflies designed for use in the annual Dragonfly Survey. Furthermore, it was actually designed by someone I know from my bird watching hobby, Dr. Pamela Hunt of the New Hampshire Audubon.

The other resource was from the familiar bugguide.net hosted by Iowa State University Entomology. There, I found a category of dragonflies called whitefaces. Go figure. It had eight pictures of various whiteface dragonflies so all I had to do was pick one closest in appearance to my photos. then I checked against the New Hampshire list to make sure it lives here. Sure enough, according to Dr. Hunt's checklist, the crimson-ringed whiteface does live in New Hampshire and is found mainly near the seacoast. My yard is on a mountain about 30 miles (or less) from the coast, so that checks out.

From there, I checked every other whiteface species listed at the bugguide site to rule them out. One other was almost a match, but had a feature which ruled it out. So that's how I identified this dragonfly as the crimson-ringed whiteface. It's marking are really quite striking. To see a slideshow of the other photos I took of the crimson-ringed whiteface click here.

This dragonfly was zipping around the edge of the forest, not in it but alongside it. There is no real body of water nearby except the small (100 gallons or so) man-made pond that I put in the backyard. The streams have largely run dry for the summer. However, the IUCN redlist website lists their preferred habitat as "lakes and ponds in forested regions, often with boggy margins; preference varies from very little to abundant aquatic vegetation." Further into the woods around my yard there are more wetlands and boggy areas and there are lakes and small ponds within less than a mile.

Life Cycle of the Dragonfly

Dragonflies, of course, lay their eggs in water and the wingless nymph lives in the water until it undergoes a metamorphosis into an adult dragonfly. Dragonfly nymphs are active predators and will eat just about anything they can catch until it is time for them to climb up out of the water, and molt, revealing at last into their adult forms. Adults mate and lay eggs in the summer. The eggs hatch before winter and dragonflies spend the winter in their aquatic nymph form.

Primitive dragonflies date back about 300 million years says Katleen Tait of the University of Pennsylvania.

The crimson-ringed whiteface is one of the group of dragonflies called Skimmers, a group which includes 38 New Hampshire dragonflies. In all there are 170 species of dragonflies known to have been found in New Hampshire.

Crimson-ringed Whiteface dragonfly (Leucorrhinia glacialis)
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011, all rights reserved

Quick facts about Leucorrhinia glacialis:
Diet: Mostly flying insects such as  bees and flies
Range:

United States (California, Connecticut, Idaho, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming)

Canada (Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward I., Québec, Saskatchewan);

IUCN Red List Status: Least Concern
When Can it be Found Here: Dragonflies don't migrate. They will stay in New Hampshire for their entire lifespan. They hatch from eggs in the late summer or early fall, overwinter as aquatic nymphs and then metamorphosize into their adult form in the spring or summer to lay eggs and start the cycle all over again.