SPATTERDOCK DARNER and FAWN darner
Another Spatterdock Darner hanging out at Cedar Bog. Note the golden color along the top of each wing.
Spatterdock Darners are the only darners in our area with brilliant sky-blue eyes. (Another species, the Blue-eyed Darner, is nearly identical but not found in Ohio.) Some of our other darners have dark blue eyes, such as the Swamp Darner, but not this baby-blue shade.
This beautiful, blue-eyed creature is a Spatterdock Darner, photographed at Cedar Bog.
This is a Fawn Darner, found June 23, 2018 in Beavercreek. Fawn Darners are not as colorful as the Spatterdock Darners above, but I was ecstatic to find this one perched. I was watching a male Fawn Darner fly slowly along the tree line, nosing into every dark cubby-hole he could find. I couldn't figure out what he was doing. I thought he was looking for a place to perch and being unusually picky about it. I finally realized that he was looking for a female, when he suddenly found one. They formed a mating wheel briefly, and then I was able to photograph the individual at left later, after the pair separated.
Fawn Darners are fairly common along shady streams, but they are very difficult to find perched. They have distinctive white spots on the sides of the thorax. (Another species, the Ocellated Darner, has more elongated spots and less brown at the bases of the wings. Ocellated Darners are the rarer of the two species and are not known to occur in southwest Ohio.)
This is a female Fawn Darner perched at Siebenthaler Fen, on July 3, 2020. She was perched in thick vegetation, making it difficult to photograph her among the branches.
This is a flight shot of a Spatterdock Darner at Caesar Creek Wildlife Area.
Another flight photo from Caesar Creek Wildlife Area. Spatterdock Darners fly from late May through mid-June.
