Horned Clubtail – OdoNotations

New Odes in Marlborough Forest

Marlborough Forest is one of my favourite spots for ode-hunting. There are so many terrific species there, including some considered scarce, rare, or even very rare according to the official Ottawa checklist. So far I’ve found three lifers here – two of which I have not seen again in the forest or anywhere else: Ocellated Emerald on June 21, 2020, and Ashy Clubtail on June 19, 2022. The third species, Kennedy’s Emerald, was a lifer for me in Marlborough Forest on June 12, 2021 in Marlborough Forest and then, oddly enough, turned up on a house in Nepean on May 21, 2023. The sheer size of the forest – over 9,300 hectares of meadows, wetlands, old plantations and natural forests – tantalized me with the mysteries hidden within its depths, whether those be bog-loving Somatochlora emeralds, remnants of old farmsteads, or rumours of long-lost graveyards.

Stony Swamp Dragons

It’s mid-June, which means the season is flying by and soon some of the early-season species will be gone. I’ve been trying to get out every chance I get, but uncooperative weather and a busy work week after my vacation meant that I wasn’t really able to get out until earlier this week for some intensive dragon-hunting. I worked from home Monday and Wednesday, and with the weather finally turning warm and sunny, a couple of lunchtime outings this week in Stony Swamp resulted in some surprisingly good dragonflies!

On Monday I visited Jack Pine Trail with one goal: to see if any Arrowhead Spiketails were flying. Some emeralds would be nice, too, as well as any spreadwings or cruisers, but the spiketail was my target species. Jack Pine Trail is the most reliable location for it in the west end, and when present I only seem to find it during the second or third week of June. The official checklist of Ottawa says it is present in the region between early June and early July, so I had high hopes of finding one.

New Dragonflies at Bruce Pit

I’ve been spending time on iNaturalist again, updating my list of odonates found at various places around Ottawa and making a list of target species that others have seen that I have not. Bruce Pit was of particular interest to me, as Chris Lewis had sent me her personal list of species last summer; I was missing quite a few species she had seen (though I had found others she had not). Between her list and those listed in iNaturalist, I counted nine regular species that I was missing from my personal list: Black-tipped Darner, Harlequin Darner, Dusky Clubtail, Lilypad Clubtail, Common Baskettail, Prince Baskettail, Emerald Spreadwing, Orange Bluet, and Stream Bluet. One reason is that I usually don’t visit Bruce Pit early in the dragonfly season when some of these species are flying, while another is that sometimes when I visit I only check one or two areas. As a result, I planned to visit the conservation earlier in the season and see if I could find some new species for my personal list.

Dragons in the Wind

On June 15th I visited Mud Lake for a morning of birding and ode-hunting. It was about 13°C when I arrived at 8:30, and although it was sunny, the persistent breeze made it feel cooler. Still, there were more odes about than I had hoped for, although at first I saw only a few damselflies (Eastern Forktails, Fragile Forktails and Powdered Dancers) and Dot-tailed Whitefaces. It wasn’t until about an hour into my walk that I came across my first interesting odonate observation of the day: a lilac bush with several dragonflies perching on its branches. It was the Spiny Baskettail landing on an exposed twig that caught my attention, and while I was trying to photograph it a few more dragonflies landed nearby: first a Blue Dasher and then a Prince Baskettail! These large emeralds are the least likely of the baskettails to land, so seeing one perching is always a treat.

Hudsonian Whitefaces of the Bog

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!

New Dragonflies at Marlborough Forest

The beginning of June arrived with plenty of warmth and sunshine, and I couldn’t wait to go back to Marlborough Forest at the peak of butterfly and dragonfly season to look for new species living there. Last year when I started going to Marlborough Forest in mid-June, I kept seeing large, dark dragonflies – almost certainly emeralds of some sort – zipping down the shadowy trail before the sun had fully risen above the trees. I never had my net on me when I saw them on my early-morning birding walks, so I was unable to catch one to verify their identity. This time I was prepared for these dawn-flying dragons, and brought my net with me. I had already added one dragonfly to my life list, the Ocellated Emerald at Trail E4 last year; was it possible that there were other species of interest here?

My first summer visit to Trail E4 occurred on June 6th. Although the morning started out cool, it quickly warmed up. The usual birds were singing along the trail, including all the Red-eyed Vireos, Eastern Wood-pewees, Eastern Kingbirds, Veeries, and the Tree Swallows that were missing from my mid-May visit. I heard seven warblers (Ovenbirds, Northern Waterthrushes, Black-and-whites, Nashvilles, Common Yellowthroats, Black-throated Greens, and a single Magnolia Warbler), two Chipping Sparrows, a Field Sparrow, and a Blue-headed Vireo singing in its usual spot in the large open area devastated by motor bikes and ATVs.

The Dragonflies of Mud Lake

Once migration winds down, many birders stop visiting Mud Lake while they look for breeding birds elsewhere. Although birds such as Wood Duck, American Redstart, Yellow Warbler and Common Ravens are abundant and easy to find at the city’s premier migration hotspot during the breeding season, many of Ottawa’s summer specialties – such as Grasshopper Sparrow, Lincoln’s Sparrow, Golden-winged Warbler, Mourning Warbler, and Sedge Wren – are found elsewhere, and so most birders switch their focus from looking for migrating transients to chasing these summer residents down just as soon as the last Blackpoll Warblers and Arctic Terns disappear in early June. This is about the same time my attention to dragonflies and butterflies intensifies – and Mud Lake is a great place to find a good variety of both these insects.

Ode-hunting in Prince Edward County

During the first week of July my fiancé and I spent some time in Prince Edward County with my dad’s family. We rented a cottage on Loves Lane on Prince Edward Bay, a nice three-bedroom place with 8 acres of land only 20 minutes away from both Sandbanks and Picton. The weather was beautiful, and I spent most of my time getting to know the local residents. On our first full day at the cottage (Monday, July 1st), I went for an afternoon walk on the property to see what I could find. It seemed to be a good spot for odonates; every now and then a couple of Prince and Common Baskettails flew in and started swooping above the deck. There were some other dragonflies present too, so I brought my net out in the hopes of catching one.

Dragonflies at Mud Lake

By the end of June it seemed that summer had finally arrived and the weather had returned to normal: the temperature had reached a consistent near 30°C, the state of emergency caused by the unprecedented spring flood had ended on June 12th, water levels were returning to normal, and the sun had finally come out! I was hoping that this meant that the dragonflies were also emerging on schedule again, and decided to head to Mud Lake on the last Saturday of June. Mud Lake is a fantastic place to see dragonflies in mid-summer, as all the dragonfly families except for Cordulegastridae – the spiketails – can be found there. Among the damselfly families both the spreadwings and pond damsels are well-represented; the broad-winged damselflies, mainly Ebony Jewelwings, are seen there from time to time. I had high hopes for my visit.

Dragonflies in June

June is one of my favourite months. Normally the weather is hot and sunny by the time the solstice rolls around, the birds are all in full song, and newly-emerged butterflies and dragonflies are returning to woodlands, fields and wetlands. However, the weather this month has not been great. The rain from May continued on and off this month, keeping water levels of the rivers and ponds higher than normal, and likely delaying the emergence of many insects. The weekends have been nice, at least; I’ve been able to get out early in the day in order to look for new birds for my year list and any butterflies and dragonflies that may have emerged. While my enthusiasm has certainly declined since our amazing trip to Costa Rica, I’ve found myself regaining interest in visiting trails and conservation areas close to home, hoping to find some species I haven’t seen since the previous summer.

The day after my trip to the Bill Mason Center, I made plans with Chris Lewis and Chris Traynor to head out to the Cedar Grove Nature Trail in Marlborough Forest to look for odes around Roger’s Pond. I would be co-leading an OFNC outing there the following weekend with Jakob Mueller, a reptiles and amphibians guy, and wanted to get an idea of the dragonflies and damselflies that were flying. As we weren’t meeting at the parking lot there until 8:30, I headed out to Sarsaparilla Trail first, then the Rideau Trail for a quick look around.

Back to Gatineau Park: A Snaketail Adventure

While at the Dunlop Picnic area, Chris and I got a call from Chris Traynor saying that he was on his way up to Meech Lake. Chris Lewis and I were on our way there next, and it didn’t take him long to catch up with us as we were walking down the large hill to the lake, listening to the vireos and a Blackburnian Warbler singing. Our destination was the waterfall at the old Carbide Wilson ruins where we hoped to find the snaketails Chris T. had reported seeing earlier in the week. However, first we spent some time exploring the shore of the lake where we found Powdered Dancers, a Chalk-fronted Corporal, and a couple of clubtails on logs too far from shore to identify. It was too early for the Slaty Skimmers to be flying; these dark blue dragonflies are one of my personal favourites, but we saw more than enough other species to make up for their absence.

Back to Gatineau Park: Mustaches and More

When Chris Lewis suggested a dragon-hunting excursion on Saturday, I was eager to go. We had to make the extremely difficult choice between Morris Island/Fitzroy Harbour and Gatineau Park, but as Chris Traynor had recently found all sorts of amazing odes at Gatineau Park (including Maine Snaketail, Riffle Snaketail, Mustached Clubtail, Dragonhunter, Horned Clubtail, Dusky Clubtail, Lancet Clubtail, Beaverpond Clubtail and Eastern Least Clubtail) earlier in the week, we decided that a morning in Quebec sounded much more appealing. I met her at her place, and with the assistance of Siri, we navigated the Gatineau Park road closures up to the Sugarbush Trail with none of the frustration I encountered the previous week.