On August 27th, the last Saturday of the month, I headed out to a spot I normally don’t visit so late in the summer – Roger’s Pond along the Cedar Grove Nature Trail. I usually go in May and June when early-season dragonflies are flying, such as the locally rare Ebony Boghaunter, the uncommon Harlequin Darner and Brush-tipped Emerald, as well as the usual whitefaces, Racket-tailed Emeralds, Spiny and Beaverpond Baskettails, and Aurora Damsels. I had two reasons for wanting to go: the first was the Band-winged Meadowhawk, a species I had seen in good numbers here on one late-summer visit several years ago but have had trouble finding recently, and the second was a yearning to find some Aeshna darners. After seeing such a good variety at my Dad’s trailer and failing to find the Variable Darner at Bruce Pit, I thought that Roger’s Pond might be a good spot to look for Ottawa’s common and uncommon species.
By the time I was ready to go at 7:30 it was warming up. As it was late in the season, fewer birds were singing at the Cedar Grove Nature Trail; only the songs of a pair of Eastern Wood-Pewees and a single Red-eyed Vireo livened up the woods. It seemed strangely quiet without the songs of the White-throated Sparrows, Veeries, Black-throated Green Warblers, and Nashville Warblers.
There weren’t as many meadowhawks as I had hoped, and it seemed strange, too, to walk down the open gravel path toward the pond without the swarms of baskettails, rackettails, and Chalk-fronted Corporals. The only meadowhawks I saw were Autumn Meadowhawks, no surprise this late in the month. I did get lucky with a darner right off the bat when I saw a Common Green Darner land close by:
There weren’t very many insects along the open trail, but I did see a few Pennsylvania Leatherwings on the Rudbeckia flowers.
From there I entered the open area at the pond. I didn’t see much at first, but three Pied-billed Grebes were swimming near the metal bridge over the dam and I saw an Eastern Tailed Blue and a Common Ringlet. I found three species of frog in the water, including Green Frogs, Mink Frogs, and Bullfrogs – I hoped that the smaller frogs wouldn’t become prey to the larger Bullfrogs which will eat anything they can fit into their over-sized mouths. A quick check at the stream at the back proved fruitless; this creek, too, had dried up in the drought, and I wondered what it would mean for the Twin-spotted Spiketails that used to fly along its length and, presumably, breed in the water. It was too late in the season to see either this species or the Emerald Jewelwings that used to flutter along the water’s edge, so I turned around and headed back to the open field area.
There I saw my first darner flying in the open space, and at first I was confused – the bright yellow and dark brown colours made me think it was a clubtail, although of course any large clubtails still flying this time of year would be found near the river and not at the marshy pond. I set about catching it, and after waiting for it to come within reach, I swung and was rewarded by the sound of frantically buzzing wings inside my net. When I pulled it out I saw this large, beautiful lady:
What struck me immediately is that the little handle at the top of the notched thoracic stripe was detached from the stripe, and that there wasn’t a small coloured oval spot in between the two stripes such as the Canada Darners have. Then I looked at the face and saw the prominent black cross-stripe. This confirmed it wasn’t a Canada Darner, but something completely unexpected: a Lake Darner!
The only Lake Darners I have seen are one at Presqu’ile Provincial Park (a poor view of it and poorer photos rendered it as my most unsatisfying lifer ever; I didn’t even really consider it a lifer at the time) and the one that I caught at Grundy Lake. This was why I had come to Roger’s Pond; not because I was expecting to find this species in particular, but because I thought it looked promising for darners in general. And there was that one time when I saw a darner with a zigzag stripe on its thorax in late May or June….!
I turned the darner over to photograph it from another angle and found it curious that the pattern on the thorax was quite different. There appeared to be a dark brown blotch in the middle where the notch is supposed to be. Is this just some sort of staining, the way the middle part of the face (the postclypeus) appears stained with two brown dots? Or is this the actual colour of the dragonfly? I tried zooming in on the original photo and wasn’t able to tell.
The dragonfly wasn’t too pleased at being caught, so once I had taken my fill of photos I let her go. This is the first Lake Darner I’ve seen in the Ottawa region – although they are found in the Ottawa region on both sides of the Ottawa River according to the OFNC checklist, I’d never come across one before, nor even knew where to find one on the Ontario side. It really pays to visit different areas at different times of the year!
When I returned to the main pond area I saw a few more darners zipping by overhead, but none of these were flying low enough to catch. More Lake Darners, or just the usual Canada and Lance-tipped Darners? As I couldn’t net any of them I will never know.
Visiting Roger’s Pond in late August was a fantastic idea. Not only did I get a “year dragonfly” with the Lake Darner, I also discovered a place where they might actually breed! It truly is a fabulous place, and one that I really should visit more often!
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