I am a lover of nature whose primary interests are birds, butterflies, and dragonflies. While I enjoy photographing them, my main interest is in observing and learning about the species I see through my lens. For those of you who are interested in seeing the best of my nature photos, please feel free to check out my gallery on Pbase.
Sheila McKee Memorial Park has been on my mind all winter. I haven’t been there since 2020, and when thinking of good spots to look for clubtails close to home, I remembered seeing Cobra Clubtails, Lancet Clubtails, and Black-shouldered Spinylegs there later in the summer on my previous visits. The open, rocky shoreline makes it a better spot to see them perching than Mud Lake, and as it isn’t as far as Gatineau Park it was high on my list of places to explore. I started poring over iNaturalist sightings over the winter and was delighted by the additional clubtail species that had been observed there – not only the Midland Clubtail my mentor Chris mentioned seeing back in 2019, but also two rarities: Mustached Clubtail and Arrow Clubtail. I’ve seen Mustached Clubtail once at Sugarbush trail in Gatineau Park, but Arrow Clubtail (Stylurus spiniceps) is so rare that it’s not even on my mental dashboard, let alone my radar. This clubtail is one of the hanging clubtails referred to in a previous post; it perches by hanging vertically from a leaf or branch instead of horizontally on the ground. Perhaps that’s the reason I’ve never seen one, then: I don’t spend too much time looking in trees for odes, unless I happen to see one fly in and land!
Although it’s been warming up nicely, I haven’t seen many dragonflies since witnessing the wonderful mass emergence of Spiny Baskettails at Mud Lake on May 12th. So when Chris T. told me he was thinking about going to Mer Bleue on the weekend, I decided to join him. Mer Bleue is ecologically significant as one of the few accessible bogs in eastern Ontario, hosting many different species not found in typical forests or wetlands. There were a couple of butterflies in particular I was hoping to see, the Brown Elfin and Jutta Arctic which I last saw in 2012, as well as the aptly-named day-flying Black-banded Orange Moth (Epelis truncataria). Several bog-loving odes were high on my list, chiefly Sphagnum Sprite, Ebony Boghaunter, Harlequin Darner, and Hudsonian Whiteface, all of which I’d seen here in my early ode-hunting days with Bob Bracken and Chris Lewis. I was also secretly hoping to stumble upon a Somatochlora emerald or two, as they are more likely to be found in the Mer Bleue bog than on the side of a random house in Nepean….or so I hoped!
The Common Green Darner is the first dragonfly I see most years, but its appearance doesn’t truly herald the start of the dragonfly season for me. Common Green Darners are migrants, usually showing up on the first warm winds of April. Spring is fickle here in Ottawa, however, and those warm southerly winds may be followed by blustery cold north winds the following week, or even worse, snow. As such it might be a long time before the next odonata sighting.
A more reliable sign for me is the emergence of the first dragonflies from local ponds and wetlands. So even though I saw my first Common Green Darners – a pair in a mating wheel at the Eagleson ponds – on April 28, I didn’t see the first local dragonflies until May 12 when a visit to Mud Lake produced several emerging Spiny Baskettails and a few teneral damselflies too colourless to identify. I took a few photos from the new observation platform; most still had milky-white wings while a few were still in the process of shedding their larval skin.
Spiny Baskettail (Epitheca spinigera)
After that I went over to the rocks on the south shore where I’d photographed a large number of Spiny Baskettails emerging in 2022. Sure enough, there I found a few fully-winged tenerals perching in the trees or on the side of the boulders waiting for their muscles to become strong enough for their first flight. Out of the corner of my eye I could see these fresh teneral dragonflies lifting off from their perches all around me and heading for the trees. In the meantime, I was able to prompt a few that were hanging precariously from the rocks above the water to crawl onto my hand where I identified them as Spiny Baskettails before placing them on the branch of a shrub in a safer position
Spiny Baskettail (Epitheca spinigera) Emerging
One fell into the water before I could lift it off of the rock face, and I was able to fish it out with my hand – I had no net with me as I had been birding with a friend and didn’t expect to see any dragonflies.
Seeing all these baskettails in various stages of emergence on such a beautiful, warm afternoon after a week of rain and cooler temperatures left me with a feeling of joy and wonder. Dragonfly season has finally begun – I’m hoping that they will bring the sun and nice weather with it!
Spiny Baskettail (Epitheca spinigera) emerging – note the exuvia
Spiny Baskettail (Epitheca spinigera) with its exuvia and a teneral damselfly
Teneral Spiny Baskettail (Epitheca spinigera) fluttering its wings before flight
Teneral Spiny Baskettail (Epitheca spinigera)
Male Spiny Baskettail (Epitheca spinigera) – note the curving claspers
By October I’m thinking about putting the net away for the season. If it is still warm at the beginning of the month, I will usually take the net out as long as I’m still seeing darners and small bluets around. Once I’m seeing nothing but meadowhawks, however, it’s time for me to declare an end to the season and put my gear away until the spring. This year the first week of October was very warm, with temperatures reaching 30°C; they then returned to seasonal for the next week with temperatures in the mid-teens. By the end of the month temperatures were in the single digits during the day and falling to below zero overnight, bringing an end to all but the hardiest of dragonflies. That title belongs to the meadowhawks, in particular the Autumn Meadowhawk (Sympetrum vicinum). It is no coincidence that it is the latest-flying dragonfly in many areas of the northeast….sometimes by several weeks. Once called the Yellow-legged Meadowhawk, it was renamed in 2004 by the Dragonfly Society of the Americas because mature individuals often have brown legs instead of yellow and because it persists so long into the fall. It is the only dragonfly in our area with entirely brown or yellow legs (never black), making identification relatively easy. And it is the only species you are likely to see in Ottawa in November!
Although technically still considered summer until the equinox, the month of September ushers in the beginning of fall, the season most associated with change and impermanence, with encroaching darkness, with death and transition and the melancholy appreciation of the last burst of colour before the inevitable bleakness of winter. I can’t help but be reminded that this is the season of endings every time I go outside: the robins are gone from the neighbourhood, the songbirds in the woods have stopped singing, trees are changing colour, and the asters and goldenrods have replaced all the other wildflowers along roadsides and in conservation areas. In the dragonfly world, it is the season of the meadowhawk, the glider, and the darner, as these types of dragonflies are by far the most numerous. The goal now is to search out any others that may still be flying, and see how long into the season they last. Part of the reason is purely scientific – to get a better grasp of the flight seasons of local odonates. However, another part of the reason is purely emotional – I never know if a sighting will be the last of the year, and hope to put off the final goodbyes as long as possible.
After I returned from my visit to southern Ontario I still had bugs on the brain, specifically odonates. Now that September has arrived the days will be getting shorter and the nights cooler, which spells the end of the season for a number of different species. It is, however, prime time for darners, and I still had yet to find a Lake Darner or Green-striped Darner this year. I also haven’t seen any Saffron-winged Meadowhawks either, another species that peaks in August and early September, despite searching known locations at the Eagleson storm water ponds. While I knew that bird migration was heating up, my brain hasn’t yet made the switch from odes to birds. I am having trouble getting up early enough to get out for my regular birding walks before work, and I won’t even consider putting my net away while the weather is still nice – I want to wring every last sunny moment looking for dragonflies and damselflies before taking the mandatory six-month winter hiatus. This has never happened to me before, and while I still am using eBird to keep track of what I see, most of my checklists are incidental ones noting only a few species that caught my attention while out later in the day dragonfly-hunting.
Although I could have spent most of my time in Chatham-Kent at Peers Wetland, we visited a few other places in my quest to find odonates around Wallaceburg. After a productive morning at Peer’s Wetland on August 31st, we went home for lunch, then took a walk at Crothers Conservation Area only a few blocks from my mom’s house in the north end of Wallaceburg. This little slice of green space runs alongside Running Creek, a small muddy stream which flows into the North Sydenham River. Although this small conservation area consists mostly of neatly manicured lawn, and more rightly ought to be called a park than a conservation area, the riverbank has some natural growth of riparian shrubs and cattails that prevent it from looking too obviously landscaped. Wild green space is scant in the southwestern corner of the province – a bird’s eye view shows it to be entirely dominated by the patchwork of farms vital to the province’s agricultural industry. The few remaining patches of forest, wetlands, and untamed thickets along the riverine corridors are precious; it seems that in this part of the province, every square inch has been assessed and tallied with almost all of it given over to human management, whether for production, recreation, residential, or commercial purposes.
My mother lives in Wallaceburg in Chatham-Kent, which is about a 7.5 hour drive from Ottawa, or a full day train adventure with a transfer in Toronto (my advice for anyone travelling economy on Via: take your own sandwiches and snacks, as the menu was somewhat unpalatable…and chocolate bars/chips alone were $3.00). Being so far south she gets a variety of birds, bugs and plants that we do not get here in eastern Ontario, so I’ve been meaning to visit in the summer when I might see some new southern butterflies and dragonflies for my life list. I took an extra two days off at the end of August so I could spend the Labour Day long weekend with her, though two of the days were lost to travel. As my mother and her husband both enjoyed birds and nature, I knew they’d be interested in taking a few nature walks with me, even if the idea of looking for dragonflies didn’t exactly fill them with delight.
When I first heard about the Odolympics – a special bioblitz hosted by the Dragonfly Society of the Americas, Sociedad de Odonatología Latinoamericana, and Odonata Central in order to record as many odonata species from as many places in the Western Hemisphere as possible – I knew I had to participate. This specialized bioblitz is only two 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.
Dragonflies and damselflies, collectively known as odonates, are valuable indicators of a wetland’s environmental health and biodiversity. Simply put, the more odonates that use a wetland for breeding and feeding purposes, the healthier the ecosystem. Naturalists were encouraged to submit their observations during the bioblitz via one of two platforms: iNaturalist, or Odonata Central. While I love iNaturalist and have been using it for a few years now to record my non-avian observations, I began submitting my observations to Odonata Central last year when it developed a checklist-based phone app similar to eBird. iNaturalist also has a phone-based app for submitting observations, but it is intended to be used in conjunction with the phone’s camera which I only use as a backup camera when my Nikon Coolpix’s battery decides to take a nap. Although I love the ease of searching for data in iNaturalist’s projects, I chose to record my Odolympic observations in Odonata Central as it allowed me to include observations of species for which I am usually unable to get a photo (yes, I’m looking at you, Prince Baskettail and Wandering Glider!)
After my successful outing at Andrew Haydon Park on July 29th, I couldn’t wait to return to see the Vesper Bluets again and to look for the elusive Orange Bluet. The two successfully share the same habitat at Petrie Island, so why not in the ponds at AHP? While Vesper Bluet habitat includes the edges of woodland lakes, ponds, and slow rivers rich with emergent vegetation, Orange Bluets are present in those habitats as well as in swamp edges, bogs, slow streams, and degraded wetlands containing varying levels of pollution. I knew they were already on the wing, as I had first seen them at the Eagleson Ponds on July 3rd and have been seeing them there on and off ever since. It was just a matter of returning to Andrew Haydon Park later in the afternoon when they would be at the water, as they spend the early part of the day in the vegetation or trees nearby.
The Common Sanddragon is one of the dragonfly species in the Algonquin Park field that is not found in the Ottawa-Gatineau region. A member of the clubtail family, it is well-marked with a mottled green and brown thorax reminiscent of a Harlequin Darner and uniquely-shaped markings down the length of the abdomen to segment 7: they look like goblets in the male, and start out as goblet-shaped in the female but gradually lose the stem. Their legs are very short for a dragonfly, and mature males have green eyes while females have gray or brown eyes. The appendages in both sexes are pale, and they are the only dragonfly in our region which has pale appendages, a mottled thorax, and brown spots at the base of each wing. Its larvae live in rivers, lakes, and streams with sandy bottoms, and due to its short legs, the adults perch horizontally on the sandy beaches and banks of its rivers rather than hanging from trees or in the vegetation. At the time of the printing of the first edition of the Algonquin field guide, it had not been recorded within the park and was only known from a few sites in Peterborough County and a single record from Windsor in Ontario’s deep south.
July is usually the start of the best three months of ode-hunting at Andrew Haydon Park. Although I often visit the park in the spring and fall for birds, my time here in the summer is devoted to dragonflies. This park is reliable for Halloween Pennants, Blue Dashers, Eastern Pondhawks, Common Green Darners, Prince Baskettails, and the usual King Skimmers, and I’ve had Cobra Clubtail and Elusive Clubtail here as well. I visited on July 29th with the hope of seeing another Cobra Clubtail, as it was on July 21, 2019 that I saw one fly into a tree on a windy day, eating what looked to be a male Orange Bluet. Though I’ve looked for both species here in July in subsequent years, I only had luck with one female Orange Bluet on July 24, 2021.
It was only six weeks ago that I last added a new species to the Eagleson storm water ponds ode list, the River Jewelwing that mysteriously showed up for one day back on June 10, 2023. I wasn’t expecting to find another new species so soon, but that is exactly what happened when I went for a walk there this afternoon. My goal was to look for the diminutive Eastern Amberwings, a species that I would have looked for earlier in the month had I not been in Nova Scotia. This colony first showed up in 2017 and its numbers have been increasing in the southern ponds over the last six years. I was happy to find four males perching on the lily pads on my visit; it appears they are still thriving here.
Eastern Amberwing
I saw Orange Bluets here for the first time this year on July 3, 2023, and I was hoping to find a few close enough to the shore to get a good photo. This is the second season that I’ve confirmed their presence here, and I was disappointed not to find any on this visit.
I saw Blue Dashers here for the first time this year on July 7, 2023; this is also only the second year that I’ve seen them here, and I counted at least eight of them around the two southern-most ponds. They are so beautiful and colourful when fresh – I can’t imagine ever becoming so used to them that I don’t want to stop and admire them, especially when they are sitting on a such a lovely perch.
Blue Dasher
I saw a male and female Common Whitetail flying over the pond together; the female was ovipositing. A White-faced Meadowhawk and a Band-winged Meadowhawk were nice to see, though the Band-winged Meadowhawk didn’t stick around long enough for photos. I’ve been keeping an eye out for Saffron-winged Meadowhawks, a species that was common here in 2020 but has been diminishing in numbers ever since – I only found two in 2021 and one in 2022. I didn’t see any on this walk, making me wonder if the population has died out. Its season lasts until September, so it is not too late to keep looking for this species.
A Slender Spreadwing was the only other odonate of interest, other than the Eastern Forktails that are usually too numerous to count.
I finished my walk with a loop around the Hope Side pond, stopping at the bridge where I took a moment to scan the water toward the overpass. I’ve seen muskrats swimming and dragonflies flitting among the vegetation here, and almost immediately something small and black fluttering in the tunnel formed by the cattails toward the bridge. When I got my binoculars on it I saw a male Ebony Jewelwing sitting in the sun!
Ebony Jewelwing
Ebony Jewelwings are usually found at woodland streams, preferring those with rapids although they may be found at shaded, slow-moving streams as well. The area it was inhabiting at the Eagleson ponds is no more than a shallow channel that drains water from the ponds into a narrow waterway running alongside a patch-work of fields before entering the Jock River at Terry Carisse Park. But since a River Jewelwing has already found its way up here perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that this Ebony Jewelwing had followed. This is ode species #36 for the ponds – a terrific number for such a small area and limited habitat.
The weather played a big part in our trip this year. Rainclouds blew in and blew out all week long, bringing rain on most of the days we were there. Fortunately the sun came out long enough to get in a few hikes at the various waterfalls and for me to take some long walks while Doran was out with the car. I spent quite a few hours looking for odonates and other critters around the ponds and the Annapolis Rail Trail, mostly in the afternoons when the sky cleared up. Although they are maybe half as long as the Eagleson storm water ponds by my house and much less diverse in terms of wildlife species, I still managed to find an interesting variety of creatures.
The afternoon after our waterfall search was particularly productive. I found my first Band-winged Meadowhawk and Familiar Bluet of the trip, which are also my first observations in iNaturalist for Nova Scotia for these species.
The morning of July 18th was warm and cloudless, so we resumed our search for rushing creeks, waterfalls, and odes. I had noticed one spot on Google maps that wasn’t too far from us – Slokum Brook Falls, just north of the Trans-Canada Highway. Photos showed a nice little brook with a steep waterfall in the middle of the woods, and reviews on Alltrails.com indicated that it was a bit difficult to find, as it is very overgrown at the beginning. It is said to be the highest falls on the North Mountain that drains into the valley, though there is really only water here during the spring runoff. We drove down Lily Lake Road, slowing down once we got past the lake itself. I peered into the dense foliage along the road, and found only two spots that looked like trails entering the woods, though both had “private property” signs at the entrance. Once the forest opened up we realized we must have gone past it, and decided to turn around at the end of the road, which elbowed north onto Douglas Road as the woods gave way to farm fields.
OdoNotations 