Eastern Ringtail Dragonfly

About the Eastern Ringtail Dragonfly

The Eastern Ringtail is a dragonfly built like fine jewelry -- a pale green thorax striped in brown, an abdomen ringed in crisp bands, and a rusty-orange club at the tail tip that gives the whole insect the look of something enameled by hand. It belongs to the clubtail family, the stream specialists among dragonflies, with the family trademark: eyes that do not quite meet atop the head.

Ringtails are creek and river dragonflies, hunting from perches on sandbars, rocks, and streamside twigs where the water runs clean over sand and gravel. That makes them a quiet compliment to a waterway -- clubtails as a group are picky about water quality, and their presence says the stream is healthy.

These photos come from a July 8, 2023 session along the ponds and creek edges of eastern Travis County, where a ringtail hunted from the same few perches all morning.

Clubtails are ground-level perchers, so the good photograph means getting flat: belly-down at eye level, the banded abdomen and that orange club against clean water bokeh. They tolerate a slow approach far better than the skimmers do -- move like the heron, not like the photographer.