Anax guttatus (Burmeister, 1839)

In April 2012, I was fortunate to witness a tandem pair of Anax guttatus with the female ovipositing into submerged vegetation. These pictures were taken with a 400 mm lens (I was searching birds...), the equivalent to a 640 mm lens with the 1.6x crop factor of my Canon. Proxi-photo with a big lens, it can work !

This common species breeds in open and sometimes very artificial habitats, and may be found hawking around the borders of these, never wandering away from water. It is a powerful flier and very challenging to catch (the reason why I have not yet photos of male caudal appendages!).

The pair was harassed by an another fellow. Hmm, jealous of others' happiness ?...

The male has green and unmarked thorax, hyaline wings with a patch of amber-yellow on hind-wing, turquoise-blue patch on dorsum of segment 2 (striking feature, even in flight).

The female differs from the male in the following particulars only : dorsum of segment 2 broken up into four quadrangular blue patches, lateral orange spots of abdomen larger, hind-wings sometimes – not always – without the amber-tinted patch.

Anax guttatus is very widely distributed from India to Japan and Australia and Pacific Ocean Islands. It's so widespread that it has several English names - Lesser Green Emperor in Australia, Blue-tailed Green Darner in India...

It can breed in newly excavated sites that have little or no marginal vegetation.