Unicorn clubtail

One of the great joys of my life as a naturalist and photojournalist is discovering, then documenting, something new. Of course, it almost certainly won't be new to science—for that, I'd need to travel to terra or aqua relatively incognita—but even in my backyard or thereabouts, I often find things that are new to me. So it was today, when a local wetland blessed me with a dragonfly that, later, I identified as a Unicorn Clubtail. I know a few species that belong to the odonate family Gomphidae by sight—the Lancet Clubtail, the Black-shouldered Spinyleg, and the Dragonhunter, all of which I've photographed and written about—and though I recognized this remarkable fellow, with the "club" at the end of his abdomen and his eyes that did not meet, as a gomphid, I knew that I'd never seen his kind before. The marking pattern on his abdomen was pretty near unmistakeable, as was the striping on his thorax. The unicorn part of the common name comes from a single hornlike projection that's supposed go forth from the occiput, the area between the eyes, but it looks to me like his horn has fallen off, perhaps a casualty of the mating wars.