yellow-legged autumn meadowhawk?

Yesterday we encountered another one of those naturalist field guide snafu's that make life interesting (spelled f-r-u-s-t-r-a-t-i-n-g). There's a renewed abundance of dragonflies around the house and lang the roadside ditch. We tried taking some pictures, but the breeze was just strong enough to mess up the focus on our cell phone camera and we couldn't get the autofocus on our telephoto lens to behave, and we're out of practice with our camera and....

We went through every page of our copy of Kurt Mead's Dragonflies of the North Woods and the Stokes' Beginners Guide to Dragonflies. The best we could do was identify the dragonfly as a member of the meadowhawk tribe. Then the Better Half went wandering through the wilds of the internets and came up with a picture of an autumn meadowhawk that looked like a pretty good match. We went back to Mead's field guide. No autumn meadowhawk! ?

autumn meadowhawk?

Photo by J. Harrington

In hopes of resolving this mystery, we checked Minnesota Seasons for an autumn meadowhawk dragonfly. It informed us that yes, there is such a one and that

This species was formerly called yellow-legged meadowhawk, after the yellow legs of the juvenile. Mature adults have brown legs, a characteristic that still distinguishes them from all other meadowhawks. Tthe name was recently changed.o avoid confusion and misidentification.

juvenile autumn meadowhawk with yellow legs

Photo by J. Harrington

Back to Mead's book again and, sure enough, we found the yellow-legged meadow hawk, but with no acknowledgement of the name change. The version we have is copyright 2003. We haven't yet discovered when the name change took effect, but we have learned about an interesting dragonfly and found a web site devoted to just the meadowhawks, red dragonflies of autumn, except for the female yellowlegs (autumn), which can appear golden-brown. We don't know of any relationship between meadowhawk dragonflies and the Red Dragonfly Press, but neither have we explored that theme.

After the Dragonflies

by WS Merwin

Dragonflies were as common as sunlight
hovering in their own days
backward forward and sideways
as though they were memory
now there are grown-ups hurrying
who never saw one
and do not know what they
are not seeing
the veins in a dragonfly’s wings
were made of light
the veins in the leaves knew them
and the flowing rivers
the dragonflies came out of the color of water
knowing their own way
when we appeared in their eyes
we were strangers
they took their light with them when they went
there will be no one to remember us

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