Emeralds – OdoNotations

Odolympics: Day 9

When I got up Sunday, the sky was full of puffy white clouds – however, there was more open blue sky than cloud, and the sun was shining! I had my breakfast, then headed out to Marlborough Forest where I hoped to add several new species to my year and Odolympics lists. My first stop was Roger’s Pond, which had hardly anything of interest the last time I had visited. I thought it might be a good outing when I saw four Common Whitetails in the first opening with three on the same log, and an Eastern Pondhawk in the clearing on the other side of the trail. However, I didn’t see much as I proceeded down the open path through the cedars – there were no emeralds flying up and down the trail, no clubtails resting on the gravel trail, and only a few Chalk-fronted Corporals perching on the ground – and I began to wonder if I should have gone somewhere else.

Odolympics: Weekday Sightings

All week I’ve been dodging rain showers to get out and find dragonflies to add to my Odolympics species total. It figures the sunniest day of the week was Tuesday, when I had to work downtown. Almost every other day was overcast, and it rained heavily on Thursday and most of Friday. Limited to checking only areas close by, my dreams of tallying a large number of species completely fizzled out in the sub-optimal weather.

Odolympics Day 1 – Points West

When I got up this morning it was the type of day I’d been dreaming about all spring – already warm at 8:00, with dazzling sunshine, a clear blue sky, and lush green vegetation so vivid it finally burned the visions of the bare, brown woods and dull grey skies of early spring out of my memory. I’d been planning this excursion all week – I was heading to points west, starting at Sheila McKee Memorial Park, then onto the Bill Mason Center with maybe one final stop if I had time – I would be performing in a choir concert that night, and didn’t want to wear myself out or get home too late to get ready! I didn’t realize until later in the day that it was June 13th – the first day of the Odolympics, but even if I had it wouldn’t have changed my plans that much.

New Dragonflies at Terry Carisse Park

Terry Carisse may not have the highest diversity of odonate species, but it is worth visiting for the ones that inhabit this small park, namely Orange and Rainbow Bluets, Skimming Bluets, Stream Bluets, Elegant Spreadwings, and Fragile Forktails. Various skimmers show up along the edge of the water fairly frequently, particularly near the boat launch at the north end, but never in large numbers. My best skimmer find to date has been a Slaty Skimmer seen back in 2022 and then never since.

Other dragonfly families are less common. The only darners I’ve identified here are Common Green Darner and Lance-tipped Darner, while the only emeralds I have observed are Prince and Common Baskettails. I have never seen a clubtail, cruiser, or spiketail here, although I suppose there is a faint chance that individuals belonging to the first two families may show up here from suitable habitat nearby. The list as of this morning stood at 25 species, and I have never given much thought to what might show up next. Perhaps not all the darners cruising over the lawn in the late summer are Lance-tipped Darners, and there might be a Canada Darner among them. Perhaps a Wandering Glider would join them. Perhaps another type of spreadwing – such as Spotted or Northern – would show up at the water’s edge.

A Slow Start to the Season

The dragonfly season for odes that emerge here in Ottawa (as compared to those that migrate from further south) usually begins for me on the May long weekend, if not earlier. Odonate larvae need the waters they inhabit to warm up to a specific temperature in order to begin the transformation process, and this usually requires several days of heat and strong sunshine. Unfortunately this year the temperature was slow to warm up, with many days of cloud and northern winds that made it feel cold even when the sun was shining – I didn’t put my winter coat away until the first day of the long weekend because morning temperatures were still quite cold!

Somatochlora Surprises

Last year I visited Jack Pine Trail in mid-July to look for Brush-tipped Emeralds. I didn’t find any, though I found three species of darners, which made me wonder if the emeralds were still present – I hadn’t recorded any there since 2019 for a myriad of reasons, including closures during the pandemic lockdowns and after the derecho of May 2022. The Brush-tipped Emerald belongs to genus Somatochlora, the striped emeralds, and is the smallest representative in our region. Somatochlora dragonflies are eagerly sought after by odonata enthusiasts, as they are uncommon to scarce in most human-populated areas, requiring special trips to remote peatlands, bogs, fens and swamps; and they are gorgeous, with their metallic green, yellow and black bodies and bright green eyes. They spend most of their time hunting on the wing and will land just often enough to give a dragon-hunter hope that they might get a good look or a photo of one perching naturally, though these emeralds often don’t often perch for very long – unless it’s on the side of a house during a drizzly day, or high up in a tree where they are shaded by the canopy. Their very unpredictability in where they will turn up makes it a delightful shock when you see one flying by.

Sarsaparilla Trail in July

Sarsaparilla Trail is always worth a quick visit in the warmer months, even with the limited access to the water. The pond is fairly large, and I’ve often wondered just how many species actually live and breed here away from the boardwalk – the only point of access to the water. On June 18, 2025 I added a new species here to the list of Stony Swamp odes, a female Horned Clubtail that landed on the boardwalk and stayed long enough for some photos. After seeing that magnificent dragonfly I wasn’t expecting to add another new species to the list anytime soon, but that is what happened on one of my visits this month.

The circular trail through the woods is short – the inner loop is only about 0.5 km – so most times I only stop by for a quick walk on my lunch break while working from home, or a short visit after returning from somewhere else. My July 8 visit was a lunchtime visit, and although there were lots of clouds in the sky, the odes were flying around the pond as usual.

To Catch a Cruiser

Swift River Cruiser (Macromia illinoiensis)

I don’t see Swift River Cruisers very often, and even when I do, I seldom get the opportunity to catch or photograph one. I used to see them fairly regularly at Mud Lake, but now it seems the best place to see them – aside from my recent outing to Quebec with Chris Traynor – is Sheila McKee Memorial Park. However, even here I only see them in flight, either far out on the water or soaring high above the trees with the Prince Baskettails. Swift River Cruisers love feeding in large, sunny clearings near the rivers they breed in, dancing in the sky with graceful twists and turns too rapid to follow with the eye. They do, however, perch fairly regularly, though I have never seen one doing so at Sheila McKee Park. As such, I have not been able to enter any of my sightings into iNaturalist as photographing them is next to impossible while they are in flight.

Revisiting Terry Carisse Park

I haven’t spent much time at Terry Carisse Park this year, as I’ve had other projects and priorities demanding my attention and limited ode-hunting time. However, in May I received an email from a blog reader in Montreal named Pierre who was interested in trying to find a particular damselfly species – the Rainbow Bluet – which he and his wife had tried to find last year, without any luck, in known areas of Ottawa. He was interested in visiting Terry Carisse Park after reading my blog posts and messaged me in late May for the details, hoping these small, colourful damselflies would be easier to find this time around. I told him the best places to find them in the park (at the canoe/boat launch at the north end of the park and in the sunny vegetation at the top of the river bank along the south end) and told him to let me know how it went. I didn’t expect to hear from him until after his visit, but received another message on June 12th asking if I had been there recently. I hadn’t – I’d spent the previous two weekends in Nova Scotia, and the weather on my remote-work days has been too lousy to go look for odes. But when I saw the forecast for the following day – sunny and warm – I decided to head on over to see if I could do some pre-scouting for him ahead of his weekend trip.

Two provinces. Six families. One unbelievable day.

If you had told me it was possible to see more than a dozen Prince Baskettails hanging from the pine trees like early Christmas ornaments, three perching Swift River Cruisers (including two in a mating wheel), a perching Springtime Darner, an ovipositing Cyrano Darner, an emerging Dragonhunter, four additional clubtail species, a dozen Brush-tipped Emeralds, about 50 Widow Skimmers, and an Arrowhead Spiketail all in a single day here in the Ottawa region, I am not sure I would believe you. That kind of day is so rare in Ottawa that I would would assume that you were engaging in a particularly fanciful daydream. However, on the Quebec side of the river many things are possible. Part of it is due to the scenic geography – the deep, rocky lakes, rushing streams, and variety of marshes, swamps and bogs carved out of the Canadian Shield provide a fantastic variety of habitats. Part of it is due to the untouched wilderness outside of the Gatineau area – there are no cottages lining the shore, no subdivisions full of manicured lawns, no pesticides and insecticides to wreak havoc on insect populations. These two factors make it an excellent place to see a variety of odes – especially along the Ottawa River, a major dragonfly habitat of its own.

The Bite of a Dragon

This weekend promised to be the hottest one of the year – over 30°C with humidity that made being outdoors feel like being smothered in a wet sheet. I went out early Sunday morning to Sheila McKee Memorial Park, hoping to find more clubtails and perhaps an interesting darner or emerald. As it was already 10:00 when I got there, I went down to the beach first because I thought it would get more crowded later and because the sun hits the shoreline at the base of the escarpment early in the morning – a vital factor when looking for uncommon dragonflies sitting on sun-drenched leaves.

Looking for Spring Odes at AHP

Andrew Haydon Park is not a place I visit often in June; it’s more of place I visit in fall and early winter for migrating waterfowl, early spring for more of the same, and then in July through to the end of dragonfly season to look for summer odes. I’ve never looked for odes at the beginning of dragonfly season, since all of the species recorded there are easily found elsewhere, but after reviewing iNaturalist I realized there were a lot of species present that I hadn’t yet recorded there personally. Most of these are one-time observations on iNaturalist – many are very common species that fly early in the season, and only a handful fly later in the summer. This made it a great reason to stop by the park for a quick check after leaving the Watts Creek Pathway and before going on to Sheila McKee Memorial Park.

Exploring Kanata’s Creeks

Last November I spent some time on Google maps looking for accessible creeks around the fringes of Kanata north where I might find some creek-loving odonates. If a tiny fragment of a stream in Stony Swamp could hold Arrowhead Spiketails, who knows what other species might call these small streams home? I wasn’t expecting anything as magnificent or scarce as a Mustached or Eastern Least Clubtail, but I thought that Stream Cruisers, Fawn Darners, River Jewelwings, and maybe a spiketail might be possible.

A few areas looked particularly interesting, including a section of Shirley’s Brook between Station Road and Monk Environmental Park, the stream that drains the eastern end of the Beaver Pond near Lismer Pines Park, and Stillwater Creek where it runs between Corkstown Road and the Trans-Canada Trail, aka the Watts Creek Pathway. Although all of these streams run through green space, the surrounding areas had become built up with new homes and developments over the years. The Crystal Bay/Lakeview Park subdivision just south of Andrew Haydon Park is long-established, with a narrow band of trees running between the subdivision and Highway 417, but the area around the Beaver Pond off of Goulbourn Forced Road started being cleared for housing relatively recently (around 2010), starting with the controversial Terry Fox extension, and houses are still being built there to this day. The forest is thickest in Monk Environmental Park where there is little encroachment so far, and my hopes were highest for this little park as a result.

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.