Bug FAQSedge Darner
Aeshna juncea · Order: Odonata · Family: Aeshnidae
Also called: Common Aeshna, Common Hawker, Common Hawker Dragonfly, Moorland Hawker
The sedge darner is a large hawker dragonfly about 74 mm long with a brown body. Males have a black abdomen with paired blue-yellow spots and narrow dorsal thorax stripes; females have a brown abdomen with yellow, green or blue spots, and both sexes have a yellow wing costa. It lives across the Palearctic region and northern North America and flies from June to early October.
Source: Wikipedia
How to recognize it
Females have a brown abdomen with yellow, sometimes green or blue spots. Both sexes have a yellow costa on the leading edge of the wings.
Source: Wikipedia
Size
It measures about 74 mm (2.9 in) in length.
Source: Wikipedia
Life cycle
Adults are on the wing from June through early October.
Source: Wikipedia
When you see it
The flight period runs from June to early October.
Source: Wikipedia
Where it comes from
Its native range spans the Palearctic from Ireland to Japan and includes northern North America.
Source: Wikipedia
Lookalikes
It can be distinguished from the southern hawker by the absence of green thorax stripes.
Source: Wikipedia
Where it is found in the US
Recorded in 15 of 51 states and DC. Most records: Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Montana, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Hampshire.
Darker = more records. Counts are museum and citizen-science records, not population size.
Source: GBIF
Status: native in North America; native in Canada. Source: iNaturalist
Months it is reported in the US
Source: GBIF
More photos
Same family (Aeshnidae)
Sources
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_hawker
Look it up elsewhere: GBIF · iNaturalist · BugGuide · ITIS · Wikipedia
Text written 2026-10-22 from the sources above and checked sentence by sentence against them. Data fetched 2026-10-22.