This beautiful dragonfly, the Migrant Hawker (Aeshna mixta), has a bit of a strange name in Dutch: the Dutch call it the ‘Paardenbijter’, roughly translated to English: the horse biter. But do they really bite horses? No, that name comes from their hunting behavior. They catch insects around horses (and other animals). Because they fly so close to such an animal it seems as if they bite the animals, so there’s the name: horses biter. But they catch the insects and they do bite those insects for sure!

You can see this species everywhere in the Netherlands, even in gardens from the end of July to September. You can often see them hunting in ‘groups’ high in the air, a jumble of small helicopters. They can often be found far from water. But for reproduction, they prefer stagnant or calmly flowing water. This can even be brackish water; they can also withstand that.

The Migrant Hawker is easy to recognize if you look at it on the back. You will then see a kind of nail-shaped or golf-tee figure just behind the thorax. The brown breast has two wide yellow stripes on the side (clearly visible in this photo). Males have an abdomen with blue and brown spots. Females are brown with yellow-green spots. The last segments of the females have 2 spots instead of 1.