WANDERING GLIDER & SPOT-WINGED GLIDER
Wandering Glider, photographed on the Cox Arboretum prairie. If you see a large yellow dragonfly hovering overhead or gliding through the air, it is probably this species.
Wandering Gliders are one of my favorite dragonfly species. They are migratory and can turn up anywhere. (They love shiny cars in parking lots!)
Wandering Gliders are one of the easiest dragonflies to photograph in flight because they do a lot of hovering.
This is a Spot-winged Glider at Huffman Prairie. Notice the small dark spots on either side of the abdomen. Spot-winged Gliders are also migratory dragonflies. In our area, Spot-winged Gliders are definitely less common than their Wandering Glider cousins.
Being migratory, Spot-winged Gliders can turn up almost anywhere, even far from water. I find them more often in prairies and meadows than by the water.
Mature male Spot-winged Gliders have bright cherry-red faces. That red face is very obvious in flight. Also, the abdomen looks brownish rather than yellow.
This is a teneral Spot-winged Glider, photographed at Oakes Quarry. You can just barely see the faint spot at the base of the right hindwing. Oakes Quarry is a good place to observe both species of gliders. They love the shallow, fishless pools on the quarry floor.
This is one of my personal favorite dragonfly photos. I found this teneral Wandering Glider by the Great Miami River in Miamisburg. I had just finished photographing an Eastern Ringtail, when this teneral Wandering Glider fluttered up out of the grass and perched on some flowering Purple Loosestrife right next to me. You can tell that this is a teneral dragonfly (newly-emerged) because of the shiny wings.
I photographed this Spot-winged Glider on September 20, 2020, at Cox Arboretum. This is my personal late date for the species.
Wandering Gliders have a worldwide distribution and they wander all over the globe. In our area, they are most common from July through October, but they can show up earlier in some years. My earliest sighting is April 28th, but they are far more common later in summer and fall.
If you want to find a perched individual to photograph, your best bet is to check prairies and tall-grass meadows, especially early in the morning or on partly-cloudy days. Wandering Gliders love to perch on tall grass stems. I find more Wandering Gliders while I am hunting for butterflies in meadows than I do while I am looking for dragonflies by the water.
Note that this Wandering Glider has a yellow face. Compare it with the bright red face of the Spot-winged Gliders further below.
I usually see Spot-winged Gliders from late May through August, with occasional stragglers into September. Their flight season skews a little earlier than the flight season for Wandering Gliders (although they overlap). I see Spot-winged Gliders more often in early and mid-summer, and Wandering Gliders more often after July and into the fall.
Spot-winged Glider in flight. The spots are difficult to see sometimes when they are positioned alongside the abdomen, as shown here.
The spots are much more obvious here when the wings are in the downbeat position.