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I have been clearing brush by a lake in northwest Missouri and seen a lot of dragonflies. It's hard to get decent pictures because my phone camera sucks and they fly away before I get close. But here is one I managed to get: enter image description here

I got one other picture of another species, but it's much lower quality. enter image description here

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The overall body shape of the second dragonfly looks like a Libellula (Skimmer), due to its broad flat abdomen. It also seems to have distinct bands on all four wings, dark patches where the wings connect and a light blue abdomen, which would indicate e.g. a male Plathemis/Libellula lydia (Common whitetail). The picture is blurry though, and there might be other similar species that it can be mistaken for (the wiki page mentions a couple of similar species).

enter image description here (picture from wikipedia)

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    $\begingroup$ It looks right to me. I probably should have split this into 2 questions so I could have two answers. $\endgroup$
    – user137
    Sep 16, 2015 at 3:23
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    $\begingroup$ @user137 Well, its difficult to know in advance whether you've seen one or two species. $\endgroup$
    – fileunderwater
    Sep 17, 2015 at 8:05
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The first one is a blue dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis).

Sorry, I couldn't identify the second one but it is more probably the same.

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    $\begingroup$ Did you want to edit this further? I was reluctant to accept it right away, but I think you're correct on the first one. The second one is probably too blurry to tell much. $\endgroup$
    – user137
    Sep 15, 2015 at 3:14
  • $\begingroup$ @user137: Thanks. I completely forgot about this one. I still think they both are the same. source: insectidentification.org/… $\endgroup$
    – Devashish Das
    Sep 15, 2015 at 4:46

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