210 DRAGONFLIES OF NORTH AMERICA 
This is a very pretty slender agile species with yellow tinted wings that bear 
a pattern of brown bars and spots. Face yellow including top of vertical tubercle. 
There is a transverse line of black surrounding the middle ocellus in the fur- 
row between the vertex and the frons. Occiput brown. Thorax brown in 
front, clothed with brownish hairs. Sides with blackish stripes upon the three 
lateral sutures (stripes 3, 4, 5). Middle stripe incomplete above. Wings tinted 
throughout with amber yellow and marked with a pattern of brown as indicated 
in accompanying figure. Stigma yellowish. Legs blackish, the basal segments 
yellow. Abdomen black with 2 yellow longitudinal streaks, the middorsal one 
on segment 3-7, narrowly interrupted at apex of each of these segments; one 
lateral on segment 1—4 composed of double spots diminishing posteriorly. Ap- 
pendages yellow dorsally. 
This beautiful skimmer is abroad from June to early September. It 
frequents the borders of ponds and neighboring grassy slopes, and some- 
times when foraging, it is carried far from water by the winds. Whedon 
(’14) writes: 
A few were taken....along a bay filled with cat tails, bulrushes and 
sedges .... they were present in great numbers on the gravel flats, notwith- 
standing that the day was very dull and a steady drizzle of cold rain falling. They 
were covered with glistening rain drops which were shaken from their wings as 
they fluttered from perch to perch. 
In bright weather they were much more agile and quite difficult to capture. 
When in copulation they would ascend 50 or 60 feet and dart off over the lake 
fora time. During windy days, and it was very windy when it was bright, they 
seemed to delight in battling with the gale and in clinging like weather-vanes to 
tallest weed stalks, their wings half set. 
Their flight is not the swiftest or the most continuous, and there is 
a flutter to it suggestive of the flight of a butterfly. The female in 
Ovipositing is held by the male, and both are apt to be seen on windy 
days when other species are in shelter, dipping to the crests of foaming 
waves, far out from the shore. The eggs are better distributed than 
in most related species, and they seem to be somewhat fewer, and of 
larger size. Each egg is rotund oblong, whitish at first, soon turning 
yellowish. 
Transformation occurs in the early morning, preferably on stumps’ 
about a foot above the surface of the water. 
174. Celithemis elisa Hagen 
Hag. ’61, p. 182: Mtk. Cat. p. 167: Howe ’20, p. 86: Ris. 712, p. 725: Garm. ’27, 
p- 285. 
Length 35 mm. Expanse 62 mm. Me., Wis. to N. C. and Mo. 
A handsome reddish brown species with prettily brown spotted wings. Face 
red including vertical tubercle, except for a black stripe through the middle 
ocellus. Occiput brown. Thorax brown, paler at sides and clothed with thin 
