Autumn Meadowhawks

     Autumn meadowhawks are not hawks at all.  They are predators, however, actually skimmers in the dragonfly family of insects.  Also called yellow-legged meadowhawks, they are about two inches long and have two-inch wingspans.  Males have red abdomens and reddish-brown thoraxes, that are most apparent in sunlight.  When at rest on a water-side twig or stone, they hold their four wings down and forward. 
     We visited the swimming lake at Mt. Gretna, Pennsylvania on October 12th and saw striking red leaves on red maples and black gum trees that were reflected in the water, several Canada geese and mallard ducks, a couple migrant pied-billed grebes and a belted kingfisher.  The grebes and kingfisher were there to catch small fish, each kind in a different way; the grebes diving from the water's surface and the kingfisher dropping beak-first from the air. 
     And we saw several pairs of autumn meadowhawks swiftly flying in tandem, back and forth, low over the water.  Claspers on the ends of the males' abdomens gripped the females just behind their heads.  Females of each attached and hovering pair lowered their abdomens into that impoundment to lay eggs, one at a time, into the water.  Taking the limelight over that lake that day, they were the most individuals of their species I had ever seen anywhere.
     Adult yellow-legged meadowhawks fly from late July into early November, the latest kind of dragonflies I ever saw flying.  Up to late July, they were larvae on the mud on the bottom of the impoundment where they caught and consumed invertebrates and small tadpoles and fish.  But then those young dragonflies crawled out of the water, shed their larval exoskeletons, pumped out their newly-developed wings and flew off to catch and eat flying insects, and look for a mate.
     Autumn meadowhawks live from the southern part of eastern Canada through the eastern United States to Florida and Texas.  They generally aren't seen until fall, when they are the dominant species of their family around ponds, marshes and slow sections of creeks.     
     If around a pond or marsh in fall, look for these reddish dragonflies.  They are pretty, interesting and surprising late in the year when we aren't thinking about insects.