Gillian

In Memoriam – Christina Lewis

Earlier this month I was informed of the passing of one of Ottawa’s original dragon-hunters, Christina Lewis. She was not only a mentor to me and Chris Traynor in all things odonate, she was a dear friend and a lovely person – humble, self-effacing, with a quiet sense of humor and deep love of nature.

Chris and her late partner Bob Bracken developed an interest in odes in the 1990s and were tutored by Raymond Hutchinson, Benoit Menard, Paul Catling, Colin Jones and Michael Runtz. They pored over EM Walker’s old publications, corresponded with Colin Jones, and spent time in the field with Raymond Hutchinson and Benoit Menard on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River, Paul Catling on the Ontario side, and Michael Runtz in Renfrew County where he lived at the time. These men were the most instrumental in helping Chris and Bob learn how to look at odes, where to go to find them, and encouraging them to document their records. In 1998 she and Bob produced the official checklist of odonates in the Ottawa-Gatineau region, which has been updated several times since then. They wrote many articles for the Ottawa Field Naturalists (and not just about odonates), but their joy came from visiting a variety of habitats just to see what was around, sometimes looking for specific species, often submitting their observations to Ontario Odonata.

Taxonomy Change: Didymops

The so-called “brown cruisers” are no more. On April 16, 2025 genus Didymops, representing two species – the Stream Cruiser (Didymops transversa) and Florida Cruiser (Didymops foridensis) – was changed to Macromia, which includes all of the river cruisers.

Regarding differences between the two genera, Ed Lam’s fantastic new field guide Dragonflies of North America notes that the brown cruisers “fly early in the spring, their life cycle largely completed before river cruisers emerge”. Dennis Paulson’s information-packed guide Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East describes brown cruisers as “smaller, duller editions of the large and showy river cruisers” and states that they “hold the abdomen more elevated than river cruisers do”.

Clearly such differences are no longer important enough to warrant the brown cruisers being placed in their own genus.

Odonata Highlights 2024

This year has been a good one for odonates. I have enjoyed ode-hunting in a few new provinces, discovered new parks and ponds right here in Ottawa, found lifers in three different provinces, re-discovered species I hadn’t seen in years, and added quite a few new species to places I thought I knew well. Despite the changing climate and weather systems that are occasionally severe enough to damage vulnerable ecosystems, odonates continue to survive and thrive in many parts of eastern Canada. Here are my top ten odonata highlights of the year.

Last Odes on the Wing: October and November 2024

Another ode season is over. Ottawa had some beautiful warm weather during the month of October – there were 26 consecutive days where the daytime high reached 9°C or above (between October 1st and 26th), tying for the 5th longest streak on record. As a result of the warm weather, I thought this would be the year I’d find more species flying later. Our first frost of the season occurred on October 16th with an overnight low of -1°C; this is a week later than the average first frost date. Then a warm spell hit late in the month – October 30th reached a ridiculous high of 22.2°C and October 31st hit 23.9°C, the warmest such days since records began in 1872. The month was mostly dry, with very little rain until the 29th.

November was cooler, though daytime temperatures remained above zero throughout the entire month. It’s not the day-time high that limits the dragonfly season in Ottawa, however; rather, it’s the nighttime lows falling below freezing. While the latest-flying dragonfly, the Autumn Meadowhawk, can withstand a few light frosts, a hard frost will kill both it and the flying insects it feeds on even if subsequent days reach double-digits. November 2nd and 3rd were both below -3°C, while November 9th and 10th were both below -2°C. A string of subzero nights after November 11th followed by warmer but cloudy, windy or wet days after November 20th ended the dragonfly season for good.

A Darner Kind of Day

Today I went to Bruce Pit to see if anything was still flying around the edges of the pond and the field at the back. When I was here last weekend, there had still been three meadowhawk species and six damselfly species (Slender Spreadwing, Spotted Spreadwing, Azure Bluet, Familiar Bluet, Fragile Forktail and Eastern Forktail) still present, as well as an unidentified darner in flight over the water. With only two days left in the month I wasn’t expecting much, and indeed the wet vegetation at the edge of the pond yielded only three damselflies on this visit: Slender Spreadwing, Spotted Spreadwing, and Familiar Bluet. I also saw White-faced and Autumn Meadowhawks, but the Band-winged Meadowhawk from last weekend was gone.

I was pleasantly surprised when I saw at least two large darners zipping along the edge of the shore, especially when one flew low to investigate the reeds close to where I was standing. My net shot out, and the next thing I knew there was an angry buzzing sound coming from inside. I had caught a darner, and I was not really surprised to find a male Canada Darner inside.

Hunting the Elusive

Yesterday at 10:30 pm I received a message from Chris Traynor – he had been perusing iNaturalist and noticed that a few Elusive Clubtail observations had been reported on iNaturalist just that day and the day before! They were bright black and yellow adults, too, not the translucent beige tenerals we had seen emerging at Sheila McKee Park back in July. As a result, he decided to scour Petrie Island and perhaps Macoun Marsh for these elusive dragonflies – he had never seen the mature adult Elusive Clubtail and was eager to see one. Both Petrie Island and Macoun Marsh are repeat sites for this species.

His message fired my imagination. Elusive Clubtails have two noticeable mass emergences in Ottawa: once around Canada Day, and once around the fall equinox. Fresh adults may be seen around those times before dispersing into the tree tops where they apparently live, though it is more common to see tenerals fresh from emergence along the shoreline. I thought it sounded fun to look for mature Elusive Clubtails along the Ottawa River, though my initial plan was to check out the Carp River restoration ponds and see what bluets might be flying…I was keen to find another spot for Azure Bluets, and thought that I might see some gliders there.

The 2024 Summer Odolympics

The 2024 North American edition of the Summer Odolympics were held between September 7-15, giving ode enthusiasts two weekends and as much time as a regular working week would allow to collect observations. I had hoped to find 19 or 20 species based on the same period spent collecting observations last year, but as most species are on the decline by this time, I knew I needed both good weather and good luck to come up with a respectful number. Unfortunately, neither luck nor weather were in my favour that first crucial weekend when I hoped to find a few species whose season ended around the beginning of September; it rained most of Saturday, and the temperature never rose above 15°C. Although it didn’t rain nearly as much on Sunday, the weather was worse: it was cloudy, windy, and the temperature never rose above 14°C. In fact, it was the coldest September 8th in more than 70 years (since 1949) and the windiest since records began in 1953 with a mean wind of 21 km/h. With a 1:00am windchill of 1.6 it was almost (within 0.1) the lowest windchill ever recorded on September 7th. Cold, wet, windy nights are even more of an obstacle, as many late-lingering species may not survive the low temperatures. When the sun began peeking out from the thick, fast-moving clouds around 4:30 I headed out despite the wind as to have zero species recorded on the first weekend was unthinkable. I didn’t expect much, and found only two species at the Eagleson ponds: an Eastern Forktail and a Slender Spreadwing.

Preparing for the 2024 Odolympics

Last year I participated in my first Odolympics and had so much fun that I planned to do it again this year. The Odolympics is a special bioblitz hosted by the Dragonfly Society of the Americas, Odonata Central, and Sociedad de Odonatología Latinoamericana in order to record as many odonata species from as many places in the Western Hemisphere as possible. This specialized bioblitz is only three years old, and there are usually two Odolympics each year: one falling during the North American summer, and one falling during the South American summer in order generate a snapshot of odonate distribution throughout both hemispheres. The 2023 Summer Odolympics ran from August 19-27, giving observers two weekends to collect observations. Although late August is well past the peak of dragonfly diversity, I ended up counting 27 species, and photographed all but three. Even with the less-than perfect weather last year, I thought that 27 species for the end of August is pretty good, providing a much better snapshot of the odes on wing in Ottawa than I had anticipated.

Cherry-Faced Meadowhawks

Cherry-faced Meadowhawks are much more common in Kings County, Nova Scotia than Ottawa. While I usually see several when I’m visiting the East Coast (in season), I hardly see them in Ottawa anymore. In my early days of ode-hunting I used to turn up males with deep red faces fairly regularly among the multitude of White-faced Meadowhawks, and I’d discovered a reliable population near the Hurdman transit station that persisted for several years. I don’t get there often anymore because it takes too long to get there from work now to make a leisurely lunch-time visit, so for all I know they are still there. It’s been a long time since I have even seen any potential candidates when I’m out ode-hunting in the west end; I think my last was a male in the ditch near near the Eagleson ponds several years ago.

Road Trip: Odes in Nova Scotia

We left P.E.I. via ferry, crossing from Wood Islands to Caribou after dinner. It was dark by the time we arrived at Seabank House in Pictou, a beautiful Victorian bed-and-breakfast overlooking the harbour that looked like something out of a Stephen King movie. In reality this 1854 building was quite charming inside, featuring spacious rooms, stained glass windows, and a grand staircase. This was our favourite accommodation of the trip (not including the AirBnB we stayed at in the Annapolis Valley). We stayed in the Hummingbird Suite with its two canopy beds, and enjoyed a breakfast of Eggs Benedict and fruit and yogurt the following morning. I was hoping to go for a walk along the harbour and look for sea and water birds for my county list before we left, but it was quite foggy outside and I couldn’t see much so I skipped it.

Road Trip: Odes in P.E.I.

We only had one night on P.E.I. (which we spent at a hotel in Summerside across from the harbour) so we didn’t do a lot of hiking or exploring. We spent the day we arrived touring the western side of the island, where I thoroughly enjoyed the birds and views of North Cape, and the day of our departure exploring the eastern half. It wasn’t until the second day that I saw any odonates – we visited the Anne of Green Gables Museum and the birthplace of L.M. Montgomery, had lunch in Charlottetown, then drove across the island to East Point before catching the ferry at Wood Islands to Nova Scotia. When we reached the museum I immediately decided not to join my dad and step-mom on the tour: there was a pond on one side of the driveway, and a small marshy wet spot on the other. I could finally do some ode-hunting!

Marshy area at the Anne of Green Gables Museum

Road Trip: Odes in New Brunswick

My dad, who is almost 75, has always loved to drive. He’s been talking about a road trip to the east coast for a few years now, but in August 2024 we finally did it: he, my step-mother and I left Ottawa on August 10th for a two-week road trip covering Quebec, New Brunswick, P.E.I., and Nova Scotia. We had done a similar trip when I was 12, but that trip included a ferry ride to Newfoundland to visit family on my mother’s side as well. Newfoundland is still very much in my father’s plans, and he hopes (as do I) to visit it in a year or two.

As usual, it was my goal to get some nature study and photography in, too, but I knew this trip would feature lots of time spent driving and visiting tourist attractions – my Dad wanted to revisit his previous trips there, including his time in the Navy when he was a youth stationed in Nova Scotia, while my step-mother had never been east before. And with neither of them in peak health anymore, we would have to limit our time on the trails, though there were plenty of national and provincial parks I was interested in visiting.

A Rare Mottled Darner

Sheila McKee Memorial Park has been such an amazing spot for odes this year that when the weekend called for not one, but TWO clear days, I decided it was worth going back for a few hours and looking for more clubtails. I arrived around 10:00, and as usual a dragonfly had claimed the first sunny opening in the woods as its territory – however, unlike the Common Whitetail, Racket-tailed Emerald, and Black-shouldered Spinyleg of my previous visits, this one was a brilliant green Eastern Pondhawk actively darting around and landing on different leaves. I took one terrible photo of it sitting on a leaf above head-height, facing me. This was the only pondhawk I saw, so I’m glad I got a photo for iNaturalist.

Finding Amberwings

The Amber-winged Spreadwing at Bruce Pit wasn’t the only good find there on July 14th. Back on July 6th I’d found a different sort of amber-wing: an Eastern Amberwing, one of our smallest dragonflies. I’d also found and photographed a Halloween Pennant, a species I’d seen flying over the water last year but hadn’t managed to find perching. I observed both species on the slope between the fence and the edge of the pond, and both were new for my Bruce Pit list. I asked Chris Lewis if she had seen either species there before, and she told me she had seen Halloween Pennant there in the past, but not Eastern Amberwing – no surprise there, since this is a relatively new addition to the Ottawa area. When I headed over to Bruce Pit after finding the Amber-winged Spreadwing at Bill Teron Park on July 14th, it was to see if I could find any more Eastern Amberwings or Halloween Pennants and get some better photos.

Of Sanddragons and Snaketails

Last year on August 5th Chris Traynor and I headed up to La Vérendrye Wildlife Reserve just beyond Grand-Remous, Quebec to look for the Common Sanddragons that had been discovered along the Desert River (Rivière Désert) in 2016. We were too late in the season to find any, but had a marvelous time watching dragonhunters and catching darners. We made a pact to return the following year earlier in the season, and on July 21st Chris, Sophie Roy and I finally fulfilled that pact. The sky was spattered with more puffy, white clouds than I would have liked, showing little blue at first, but the further north we drove the clearer the sky became. The temperature was perfect, about 24 or 25°C, with only a slight amount of humidity that really only made the temperature start to feel too warm later in the afternoon, but a fresh breeze kept us cool enough. We were in high spirits because even if we missed out on the sanddragons again there were sure to be enough interesting birds and bugs to make the journey worthwhile. And of course, the rushing rivers and waterfalls of Quebec are beautiful in their own right.