Blue Dasher Pachydiplax longipennis

The commonest dragonfly in Arkansas at most times and in most wet places. Can be frighteningly dense in grassy cuts around lakes, rivers and swamps. Small to medium sized. Smaller than the oft associated Pondhawks. Loves to perch on tips of plants and limbs up off the ground. This is an adult male from John Redman's camera. The full color male has a bright blue posterior abdomen with the residual yellow side patches forward. The hindwings often have a dark basal spot with some orange associated.

The male frontal. From my swamp on the land on Round Mountain. Flashed out some odd hypnotic eye colors. Males were all perching over water this day. Females nowhere to be seen.

The male lateral. This has not reached full color but is close. 
 
The male in the swamp in July 2019. They are one of the common dragons in my hardwood swamp and frankly on the front porch in summer.  

The female has the same tiger stripes forward and an array of yellow broken triangles and marks down the abdomen. That facial patch is iridescent. Lovely two-colored eyes.

 
The irresistable pose in the front yard. A fine dragon even if they are sometimes everywhere.  
They all seem to carry mites. This female in my meadow in 2020. One of the first shots with the new camera in that year.   
 
More mites, the face of the female, also in my meadow in 2020. 

Tough call on where to put this shot. That is of course a female Blue Dasher with her head and body in the noose. And the spider is Argyrodes nephilae. It did not weave this web. It is a commensal spider in the webs of Orb Weaver spiders most of the time, though it can make its own web in shrubs and undergrowth. Argyrodes is one of the comb-footed spiders (Theridiidae). Named for a curved comb of hairs on the fourth leg in most of the species in the family. The ones that do make webs often make disordered or globular weavings. This family includes the Black Widow spiders. This, however, is the Silverdrop Earring Spider in my book. She was scaling the wing of this magnificent spider catch like a pirate.