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Approximately 3 cm red meadowhawk with reddish face, yellowish wing bases, and black legs. Black stripes are found on the lateral sides of abdomen. Males have red eyes whereas females have brownish red eyes. Immatures have yellowish face and yellowish brown body. Both the face and the body turn red as they reach maturity (Paulson 2009).

Males creates small territories that are often close to other males' territories at dry grassy basins (Paulson 2009). The mating season recorded ranges from late July to mid August (Cannings and Cannings 1997). They mate in a wheel position often for an extended period of time. Oviposition can be either solo or in tandem (Paulson 2009), meaning the female’s head is grasped by male’s abdominal tip. The female drops her eggs on dried up pond basins or in wet lawns below knee height (Paulson 2009). Eggs hatches when the places are filled with water. Adults emerges between late June and late July (Cannings and Cannings 1997).

Bottom dwelling aquatic nymphs feed on many small soft body arthropods and vertebrates in water. Terrestrial adults feed on many small flying insects such as diptera, flying ants and termites, or moths (Lung and Sommer 2001).

This species has many very similar behaviours as Sympetrum danae and Sympetrum obtrusum despite the distribution being somewhat different, as they share similar habitats. The female is sometimes mixed up easily with white-faced meadowhawks, S. obtrusum, because S. obtrusum, as the common name suggested, have white faces whereas the female S. internum can have light yellow faces (Hutchings and Halstead 2011).