The common hawker, moorland hawker or sedge darner (''Aeshna juncea'') is one of the larger species of hawker

dragonflies A dragonfly is a flying insect belonging to the infraorder Anisoptera below the order Odonata. About 3,000 extant species of true dragonfly are known. Most are tropical, with fewer species in temperate regions. Loss of wetland habitat threa ...

. It is native to

Palearctic The Palearctic or Palaearctic is the largest of the eight biogeographic realms of the Earth. It stretches across all of Eurasia north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. The realm consists of several bioregions: the Euro-Sibe ...

(from Ireland to Japan) and northern

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

. The flight period is from June to early October. It is long with a brown body. The male has a black abdomen with paired blue and yellow spots on each abdominal segment, and narrow stripes along the

dorsal Dorsal (from Latin ''dorsum'' ‘back’) may refer to: * Dorsal (anatomy), an anatomical term of location referring to the back or upper side of an organism or parts of an organism * Dorsal, positioned on top of an aircraft's fuselage * Dorsal c ...

surface of the

thorax The thorax or chest is a part of the anatomy of humans, mammals, and other tetrapod animals located between the neck and the abdomen. In insects, crustaceans, and the extinct trilobites, the thorax is one of the three main divisions of the cre ...

. In the female, the

abdomen The abdomen (colloquially called the belly, tummy, midriff, tucky or stomach) is the part of the body between the thorax (chest) and pelvis, in humans and in other vertebrates. The abdomen is the front part of the abdominal segment of the torso. ...

is brown with yellow or sometimes green or blue spots. The wings of both sexes display a yellow costa (the major vein running along the leading edge of the wings). This species lacks the green thorax stripes of the

southern hawker The southern hawker or blue hawker (''Aeshna cyanea'') is a species of hawker dragonfly. Distribution The species is one of the most common and most widespread dragonflies in Europe. The total range is West Palearctic and covers a large part of ...

. Female common hawkers will sometimes dive out of the sky and feign death in order to avoid copulating with males. Aeshna juncea hovering

References

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External links

* * Dragonflies of Europe Aeshnidae Insects described in 1758 Odonata of Asia Odonata of North America Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus {{Aeshnidae-stub