It was just a quick trip to Cambridge, Ontario, but the weather was so gorgeous I couldn’t resist dragging my dad out for a few nature walks. Although in his mid-70s now, he is still mobile enough to get out, and while I’m looking up for birds and dragonflies, he is usually looking down for snakes and turtles or turning over logs for salamanders.
Because it was late in the season I had checked iNaturalist ahead of time to see what odes had been recorded at the beginning of October. I was blown away when I realized that American Rubyspots were still flying, and that they lived along the Grand River! Their range does not extend to eastern Ontario – they are a southern Ontario bug, though funnily enough there is a population in Montreal.
I was quite happy when I learned that this year’s North American Odolympics were to take place in mid-August this year. This would be my third year participating; the 2023 Odolympics ran from August 19-27 while the 2024 Odolympics ran from September 7-15, so I was worried that this year’s bioblitz would be held in October! However, with a start date of August 16th (and running till August 24th) it would be my earliest bioblitz yet!
Unfortunately there was one problem with that date: I would be driving to Nova Scotia with my partner and three cats during the entire first weekend! Then came the second blow: while I was excited to participate in my first Nova Scotia Odolympics, a forest fire was burning out of control in Annapolis County (not too far from where our trailer is located); the fire risk was extremely high all throughout the province due to the prolonged drought conditions; and the government had closed the woods to recreational activities, including trails in provincial and national parks. The reason for the closure was to prevent additional human-caused forest fires, which meant hiking, camping, fishing, and driving recreational vehicles on both Crown and private property were all prohibited. This decision was based on the amount of dry, flammable material present which could easily start a fire, and the fine for violating the ban was $25,000. Immediately my dreams of looking for odes along forest creeks – which were already terribly low from a lack of summer rainfall – were dashed, and even places like Miner’s Marsh were out of the question as the marsh had entirely dried up, leaving the dry, cracked muddy bottom completely exposed.
On the Friday before the long weekend my workplace allowed employees to log off work an hour earlier. This meant I had a beautiful, sunny afternoon to myself starting at 3:30. Andrew Haydon Park and the colony of Vesper Bluets I’d found there two years ago were on my mind, so I drove over right after I closed my laptop. I’d searched for them there the previous weekend, to no avail….I was probably there too early in the day for them and the Orange Bluets as I saw neither species at the water. With the sun setting a little earlier each evening as the earth tilts its way toward the equinox, the shadows were long when I arrived and I thought I might have a chance of seeing both species. I was also looking for Skimming Bluets, darners, and skimmers, though of course any cooperative ode would be welcome!
The forecast for Saturday looked gorgeous, but hot and humid. It’s been one heat wave after another this summer, and while it’s certainly preferable to the rain and smoke we’ve had previous years, I find I get tired faster in the heat.
Chris and I have been planning another trip to Quebec. He’s been eager to explore a section of Meech Creek with hidden rapids and waterfalls that looked good for clubtails and snaketails. I wanted to go with him, but I was worried about exploring a new place when I didn’t know how high or fast the water might be, how much bushwhacking we might have to do, or how long we would be out. So on Friday night I suggested that Chris do an exploratory scouting mission while I headed to a couple of places I haven’t spent too much time yet this year – Sheila McKee Park or Marlborough Forest.
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.
Burritt’s Rapids has been on my radar as a low-priority place to visit for about a year now, and if I hadn’t missed a turn on my way to the southwestern corner of Marlborough Forest I wouldn’t have ended up there on a nice warm day in mid-July. I had been curious about what species I might find at the rapids there, and was hoping to find a few new species to add to iNaturalist as it didn’t have many when I first started thinking about going there. One species I was curious about was Swamp Spreadwing, which had been found a short distance east at Rideau River Provincial Park back in 2022. The only place I’ve seen this species in Ottawa is Petrie Island, and it would be fantastic to find another one closer to home. I was also wondering if the river and rocky rapids might host some of our common clubtails, such as Dragonhunter or Black-shouldered Spinyleg.
A day without seeing a dragonfly is like a day without chocolate – sure, it’s completely survivable, but utterly lacking in joy. I had to work downtown on both the Wednesday and Thursday after Canada Day, and decided to go for a lunchtime walk along the canal to the river on Wednesday to see if I could find any weekday odes. I’d seen Prince Baskettails and Common Green Darners flying up and down the canal, and a Midland Clubtail on the rocky shore behind Parliament Hill many moons ago, so the downtown core is not completely devoid of odonates. Still, I wasn’t expecting much, and got lucky on Wednesday when I saw first a Common Green Darner flying by, then a Prince Baskettail. Then something small fluttering above one of the mats of vegetation caught my eye – a female Eastern Amberwing ovipositing in some floating vegetation! After a few more minutes of watching, I saw a pair of males fly by. I waited for several minutes for one to land but they never did.
Last winter while looking up various clubtail sightings on iNaturalist I was surprised to find a couple of rocky creek-loving species at Blakeney Rapids just outside of Ottawa County: Mustached Clubtail, Eastern Least Clubtail, and Rusty Snaketail. These are all species I associate with the small, rocky streams of Quebec, and I was startled to see that they could be found on this side of the Ottawa River. Both the Rusty Snaketail and Eastern Least Clubtail, the two species I most wanted to see, had been observed on July 4, 2023, so I made it a point to visit the first weekend of July in 2025.
On July 5, 2026, I visited Bruce Pit briefly hoping to find some spreadwings, amberwings, and pennants along the northeastern corner of the pond. The water of the pond was finally low enough to have a shoreline again; however, I didn’t spy any perching pennants or Azure Bluets, as there were no stalks of vegetation emerging from the water for them to perch on. Disappointed to find little of interest at the pond, I decided not to head to the bridge or the meadow at the back and drove over to the Richmond Conservation Area instead – I’d had a fabulous time on my previous outing there, and was certain to see more there than at Bruce Pit!
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.
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.
I often visit the former Richmond Lagoons (now called the Richmond Conservation Area) around late June or early July to look for spreadwings, as this is one of the best places to find five or six different species. It’s one of the few places I can find Lyre-tipped Spreadwings easily, and in 2023 I found another difficult-to-find species here, the Emerald Spreadwing. Both spreadwings are listed as “uncommon” in the Ottawa checklist, but the Lyre-tipped Spreadwing is also designated as “local,” having a special preference for shallow marshes and vegetated ponds completely in the open, particularly those that often dry up during prolonged droughts. While the Lyre-tipped Spreadwings typically disappear with the water, they are also quick to appear in temporary flooded areas such as farm ponds, gravel pits, and artificial ponds. While Emerald Spreadwings also inhabit densely vegetated, shallow wetlands, they can be common in shrubby or forested areas a distance away from their breeding ponds. Emerald Spreadwings are not usually successful in wetlands where predators such as fish or dragonflies are common, which may explain why they can be tough to find.
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.
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.
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.
OdoNotations 