Dragonfly season (usually from mid-May to early November) is my favourite time of year. If the Victoria Day long weekend in May is warm and sunny, I’ll be out looking for the first emerging baskettails, whitefaces, and emeralds at some of my favourite spots in Stony Swamp or Mud Lake. I don’t usually see dragonflies before then since I’m busy working during the week, and weekend weather earlier in the month is not always conducive to dragon-hunting. Any dragonflies that I do see prior to the middle of the month are usually Common Green Darners that migrate here from further south. There was one year I found a migrant Common Green Darner at Hurdman Park in mid-April (April 19, 2011), but that is the exception rather than the rule. So when I visited a small pond along on NCC Trail 24 in Stony Swamp I wasn’t expecting to see anything other than the Wood Frogs I could hear calling from around the edges, and certainly not the tiny Spring Peepers with calls so loud you would swear they were right in front of you.
As I was watching the water for the ripples made by the frogs, I was thinking that it would be only a few more weeks before the dragonflies would be dancing above the water. It was then that I saw the unmistakable flash of wings glittering in the sun. Not quite believing what I had seen, I raised my binoculars and scanned the pond. Then I saw not one, but two Common Green Darners flying in tandem. After a moment they dropped down to the pond’s surface where the female proceeded to deposit her eggs into the water! Oviposition, or egg-laying, is accomplished by first alighting on the floating vegetation in tandem, followed by the female inserting her abdomen into the water and laying her eggs on underwater vegetation. The Common Green Darner is the only member of the darner family that lays eggs in this fashion. Once the larvae hatch, it takes about three to five months for the nymphs of migrant dragonflies to emerge and reach adulthood, while in resident populations it takes about a year.1
Although it was certainly warm enough for dragonflies to be flying, it is only April 15th, and it was suggested by Chris T. that the blustery warm breezes today may have aided them in their journey here. This beats my previous first-date record by four days, and is probably now the earliest first-date for that species or any dragonfly species here in Ottawa!
Previous firsts of the year for me during the months of April and May include the following:
| Year | Date | Species | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | May 10, 2022 | Common Green Darner | Richmond Lagoons |
| 2021 | May 14, 2021 | Beaverpond Baskettail | Marlborough Forest |
| 2020 | May 19, 2020 | Beaverpond Baskettail | Back deck! |
| 2019 | May 6, 2019 | Common Green Darner | Parliament Hill |
| 2018 | May 12, 2018 | Common Green Darner | Mud Lake |
| 2017 | – | (None recorded until June) | – |
| 2016 | May 22, 2016 | Multiple skimmers, emeralds, Harlequin Darner | Roger’s Pond |
| 2015 | May 16, 2015 | Four-spotted Skimmer | Rideau Trail P6 |
| 2014 | May 11, 2014 | Common Green Darner | Old Quarry Trail |
| 2013 | May 18, 2013 | Chalk-fronted Corporal | Sarsaparilla Trail |
| 2012 | May 9, 2012 | Common Green Darner | Mud Lake |
| 2011 | April 19, 2011 | Common Green Darner | Hurdman Trails |
| 2010 | May 2, 2010 | American Emerald | Huntmar Bridge |
The ovipositing darners were definitely the highlight of the day, but there were a few other things around worth sharing as well. I found a Wood Frog in the leaf litter on one of the shadier trails, and in a sunny clearing in the woods I was delighted to find four butterflies flying – two Mourning Cloaks and two Gray Commas. One Gray Comma and one Mourning Cloak tangled frequently together in a game of chase-the-intruder, which was interesting to see…I am fascinated by interspecies interactions, wondering if two closely related species see each other as friend or foe when one encounters another in its space.
It is always exciting to see the first dragonfly of the year as the migrant Common Green Darners come heralding spring, while the resident species are still nymphs living under the water, a few weeks away from their own transformation. If it stays warm it won’t be long until the nymphs that lurked below the ice all winter emerge from the water and take their adult forms as jeweled predators of the sky.
- Miner, A. 2014. “Anax junius” (On-line), Animal Diversity Web. Accessed January 13, 2024 at https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Anax_junius/ ↩︎
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