Here you see an adult male White-Faced Meadowhawk Dragonfly during his last days on earth. (This species [Sympetrum obtrusum] is not known to migrate, according to reports.)
Only the males of this species have red bodies and only the adult males look like they were hit in the face with a cream pie. That is, as with some other animals, the common name for this dragonfly only describes the more dramatic mature male.
The red juvenile male has no white on the face and all the females of the species are yellowish-green all over. Yet, both sexes and all ages are called White-Faced Meadowhawks. (Something’s amiss in the naming here, like “mankind” including women and children and “ladybug” including males and young, but I digress.)
All of these dragonflies are small, usually getting to no more than 1.5 inches in length, but they’re among the most ferocious creatures in the animal kingdom relative to size – they’ll catch, kill, and eat almost any soft-bodied insect that will mostly fit into their mouths (including mosquitoes, black flies, midges, and flying ants), and they’ll eat hundreds of them daily. They’re good to have around, no matter what they’re called.
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on October 1 and 2, 2023.)