Green Snaketail
(Ophiogomphus cecilia)

The Green Snaketail is a very pretty, easily recognisable dragonfly; it combines three colours: its eyes, head and thorax are green (which becomes deeper and brighter with age), while its abdomen is black and yellow. And best of all (for us as photographers), as a gomphid it has the habit of sitting down a lot and being trustful. It's a Central and Eastern European species with a few scattered populations further West (in France, Germany, and e.g. on the river Po in Italy). Ophiogomphus cecilia's favourite habitat consists of relatively slow-flowing rivers and brooks with a gravelly or sandy bottom, where the males occupy a sandy stretch of river bank (or a sun-exposed rock on the bank) while they wait for the females to come down to the water. The females seem to prefer to keep themselves to themselves and are seldom seen at the water.

For an overview of the Green Snaketail's distribution in Europe, hover your mouse pointer over the map symbol .
With the authors' permission we have based this map on data published in Kalkman et al. (2010).
Legend: Red = Occurs, White = Doesn't occur; Purple = Extinct; Yellow = Vagrant.

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