Carolina saddlebags
This gorgeous dragonfly is the Carolina saddlebags or Tramea carolina. This group of dragonflies is rather closely related to the gliders, which should be obvious if you compare the shape of the wings. Things to look for: Medium-large dragonfly, 2 inches. Long, broad wings. Hindwings with wide deep red-brown spot at the base. Body bright red, with two black abdominal segments the near tip of the abdomen. Males and females similar. Common across most of the eastern U.S. Note: this species may be replaced by the red saddlebags (Tramea lacerata), which looks nearly identical, in swarms if you are in the western part of the country. The red saddlebags hasn’t ever been officially declared a migratory species, however. You can distinguish the two by looking at the color of the face (Carolina has a violet forehead while red does not) and the black abdominal segments (the black doesn’t wrap all the way around the sides of the segment in the reds as it does in the Carolinas), but these characteristics may be difficult to distinguish in the field. Luckily, the ranges of these species don’t overlap very much except in eastern Texas and Oklahoma.
(source:google/http://thedragonflywoman.com/)
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