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Identify these two large, colorful dragonflies in Taiwan?

Biology Asked on July 16, 2021

Here are two dragonflies that I photographed today in Hsinchu county Taiwan. They are both quite large, with a body length of about 5 or 6 cm.

I often see them in the same pond or nearby marshy area. They seem pretty confident and are easy to photograph as long as you don’t make a big commotion.

The arrows were drawn for my other question Why do dragonflies have these special little spots on their wings?

Is it possible to identify these two species? I can break them out as separate questions if necessary; I don’t want to flood the site with "identify this dragonfly" questions.

The first is jet-black everywhere except for a robins-egg blue powdery coloration along the top side of the first two-thirds of it’s abdomen. It’s wings, like most but not all dragonflies, are transparent.

The second has some amount of red almost everywhere; its eyes and thorax are dull red and it has bright red patches on each segment of its abdomen. Notably its wings are solid opaque red, except for the furthers 1 cm which is transparent. The tiny "special spots" on the tips of each wing are a particularly bright shade of red!

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One Answer

Looks like this species is Orthetrum triangulare commonly known as blue-tailed forest hawk. It is an Asian fresh water dragon fly species.

As you mentioned that the dragonfly had a bluish hue, it became clear.

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The other one looks like Neurothemis ramburri, commonly known as red perch Reference

Neurothemis is a genus of dragonflies in the family Libellulidae. Most Neurothemis species are red in color. Neurothemis ramburii (Brauer, 1866) is distributed from Sundaland to New Guinea. There are records from Peninsular Malaysia, Taiwan, the Andaman Islands, Sumatra, Java, Borneo (Sarawak, Sabah, Brunei and Kalimantan), the lesser Sunda islands, the Philippines, the Bismarck islands and New Guinea. It is a widely distributed and common species that thrives in disturbed habitats.enter image description here

Correct answer by Ojasvi on July 16, 2021

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