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 dragonflies are known. Most are tropical, with fewer species in temperate regions. Loss of wetland habitat threate ...

. It is native to

Palearctic The Palearctic or Palaearctic is a biogeographic realm of the Earth, the largest of eight. Confined almost entirely to the Eastern Hemisphere, it stretches across Europe and Asia, north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. Th ...

(from Ireland to Japan) and northern

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

. 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 The fus ...

surface of the

thorax The thorax (: thoraces or thoraxes) or chest is a part of the anatomy of 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 di ...

. In the female, the

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

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 range in the Western Palearctic covers a large part of Eu ...

. 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