Needham's Skimmer

About the Needham's Skimmer

Needham's Skimmer is the flame of the coastal pond - a mature male is washed head to tail in fiery orange-red, with amber-tinted wing veins that glow when the sun comes through, one of the showiest dragonflies on the Texas coast.

It is the coastal counterpart of the widespread Golden-winged Skimmer, and telling them apart is proper dragonfly nerdery: on Needham's, the hind edges of the wings stay clearer and the leg color and vein details differ - but near the Gulf, the odds favor Needham's.

Females and young males are golden-yellow with a neat dark stripe down the top of the abdomen, handsome in their own right and easily passed off as a different species by the unsuspecting.

Like all skimmers they are perch-and-sally hunters, claiming a favorite stem over the water, launching at passing insects, and circling back. Males patrol pond edges and spar in quick orange dogfights. For a photographer at a July marsh, a fresh male in full sun is about as much color as a dragonfly can carry.