Bug Encyclopedia
Search and identify bugs & insects — beetles, butterflies, moths, ants, bees, spiders and more — with size, habitat, danger, behavior, and how to tell them apart.
Common Clubtail
This river-loving dragonfly gets its name from the noticeably widened, club-shaped tip of its abdomen, which it displays as it rests on sunlit waterside vegetation.
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Dragonfly
A large, agile aerial predator with an elongated body, enormous compound eyes, and two pairs of strong wings held straight out to the sides at rest, often seen patrolling over water in search of prey.
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Dragonfly Nymph
A stocky, camouflaged underwater predator that spends months or years stalking prey along the pond bottom before transforming into an aerial dragonfly.
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Emperor Dragonfly
One of Europe's largest and most powerful dragonflies, a fast, high-flying hunter with a bright sky-blue abdomen in males and a commanding, tireless patrol over open water.
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Blue Dasher Dragonfly
A small, common dragonfly whose mature males combine a powdery blue abdomen with brilliant green eyes, often seen perched horizontally with its tail raised skyward.
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Green Darner Dragonfly
One of the largest and most widespread dragonflies in North America, its green thorax and target-marked face make it unmistakable as it patrols open water on powerful wings.
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Common Whitetail Dragonfly
A stocky pond-side dragonfly whose mature males sport a broad, chalky white abdomen that flashes conspicuously against boldly banded wings.
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Common Sanddragon
A sand-colored clubtail dragonfly that perches flat on bare, sunlit riverbank sand, nearly vanishing against the grains around it.
dragonflyDragonhunter
North America's largest clubtail, the Dragonhunter is a powerful predator that lives up to its name by capturing and eating other dragonflies, including species nearly its own size.
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Widow Skimmer
A medium-sized dragonfly named for the broad, dark mourning-veil-like patches at the base of its wings, seen perched on shoreline vegetation across much of North America.
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Slaty Skimmer
A mature male Slaty Skimmer is powder-blue-gray from head to tail with jet-black wing tips, giving it a slate-colored, almost monochrome look as it patrols pond edges.
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Common Green Darner
A large green-and-blue dragonfly and the official state insect of Washington, best known among dragonfly watchers for an annual migration that spans multiple generations.
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Eastern Pondhawk
A bold, ground-perching dragonfly whose bright green females and powdery blue males look almost like different species, and which readily preys on other dragonflies.
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Halloween Pennant
With broad orange-amber wings banded in dark brown, this dragonfly perches conspicuously atop tall grass stems, swaying like a small flag in the breeze.
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Black Saddlebags
A large, nearly all-black dragonfly with a bold dark patch draped across the base of each hindwing, patrolling high over ponds and open ground like a small kite.
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Flame Skimmer
A blazing orange-red dragonfly of western waterways, the Flame Skimmer perches boldly on sunlit rocks and twigs, its amber-tinted wings glowing like embers in flight.
dragonflyOwlfly
An acrobatic, dragonfly-mimicking predator instantly given away by its long, clubbed antennae, a feature no true dragonfly ever has.
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Ruby Meadowhawk
A small, brilliant-red dragonfly of late summer meadows, so intensely colored that mature males seem to glow when perched low in the grass.
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Painted Skimmer
The Painted Skimmer's warm amber-and-brown mottled wings look like they were dabbed with a paintbrush, making this medium-sized skimmer one of the more artistically marked dragonflies in the East.
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Eastern Amberwing
One of North America's smallest dragonflies, the male Eastern Amberwing glows with solid amber-orange wings and often wags its abdomen in a wasp-like display over floating algae.
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Broad-Bodied Chaser
A stout, flat-bodied dragonfly that is often the first to colonise a new garden pond, with males showing a powdery pale blue abdomen and females a warm golden-brown one.
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Roseate Skimmer
A vivid pink-violet dragonfly of southern wetlands, the mature male's rose-pruinose body makes it one of the most striking skimmers found around ponds and canals.
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Wandering Glider
One of the most widely traveled insects on Earth, this golden dragonfly rides high-altitude winds across oceans and continents, rarely landing as it forages endlessly on the wing.
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Four-spotted Skimmer
A brown, sturdily built dragonfly marked with a single dark spot on each wing, this holarctic species is famous for occasional mass emergences and long-distance swarming flights.
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