Flame Skimmer

About the Flame Skimmer

The Flame Skimmer is the dragonfly that looks like it should set the cattails alight -- a mature male is saturated head-to-tail in glowing red-orange, with amber washed through the wing bases so that the whole insect ignites when backlit. Even among Texas's colorful skimmers, nothing else burns quite this completely.

It is a westerner at heart, common from the Hill Country westward wherever springs, stock ponds, and slow streams warm in the sun. Males stake out prominent perches over the water and sally out after prey and rivals, returning to the same twig with the reliability of a flycatcher -- the habit that makes skimmers the gateway drug of dragonfly photography.

This male was photographed on July 8, 2023 at a Travis County pond, holding his perch through the heat of a summer morning while the rest of the odonate cast -- ringtails, gliders, dashers -- worked the same water.

Shoot a Flame Skimmer twice: once front-lit for the saturated red, once backlit for the amber wing-glow. The second frame is the keeper -- it is the closest thing Texas offers to photographing a lit match with wings.