Odes we have and where to find them.
Jul. 31st, 2021 05:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickIt's been a while since I did an updated list of the odes found in my stomping grounds. Digital cameras are a lot better now and I have better pictures and more sorts of odes. It is time for a new and better list, one that might also reasonably serve as a field guide if anyone wanted that sort of thing. (Nobody does.)
Because I'm doing kind of a field-guide-y approach to this, I'm gonna go by habitat (pond vs. not-pond) this time around. This section is the POND SPECIES section.
Skimmer group. These dragonflies perch on vegetation, bodies held horizontally. They patrol in short flights along the shoreline and aerial-duel with other males (of the same species) to defend territory. Skimmers are a very accessible group of dragonflies -- they are fairly big, not overly athletic, hang out where you can see them easily, and can be differentiated on the wing.
Widow Skimmer. Easily seen around the lake shore. We have tons of them. If this is not our most-common odonate, it's in the top five and certainly the easiest one to learn right off the bat. Males have pale blue/white and black wings.
Slaty Skimmer. Solid, navy-slate blue body with plain clear wings. Common but not very flashy, has a long season.
Spangled Skimmer. Medium-blue body, clear wings with tiny white pterostigma (pterostigma is science for "colored spots in the upper front corners of the wings"). The white pterostigma are particular to this species and a field mark for ID. The pterostigma in all ode wings is a localized area of heavier weight to help stabilize the wings and dampen vibration when they're in use. Yay science.
Twelve-spotted Skimmer. The most-flashy of the skimmer group. Unmistakable wing spot pattern. There simply isn't anything else like it.
Corporals are ground-perching dragonflies. They'll be on a dock, on an upside-down boat bottom, on the ground a lot more than on vegetation. We have two kinds, chalk-fronted and blue. Chalk-fronteds are very common, blues are infrequently seen.
Blue Corporal. Early season. Looks like a chalk-fronted corporal except more skittish in behavior and about 3/4 as big. And BLUE, not chalky.
Chalk-fronted Corporal: VERY common on docks, especially in June. Population drops off in mid-July.
Pennants are small dragonflies that perch at the very tops of vegetation, like, well, pennants. We have two kinds.
Calico Pennant: Common, fairly small dragonfly. Males have heavily patterned wings and a reddish overall color.
Halloween Pennant: Relatively uncommon late-season dragonfly. Wings are almost solid orange with black bands.
Clubtails are a more challenging group. They're not easy to tell apart and they're not very brightly colored.
Lancet Clubtail: small exceedingly common clubtail. Sort of a dull greenish-grey with a bit of yellow at the tail. If you see a small nondescript dragonfly at the lake or in the grassy fields near the lake, perching on the ground (not vegetation), it's probably this one.
Dusky Clubtail: If it's bigger than a Lancet clubtail and at the lake, it's this one. They look very similar. Duskys are also ground-perching most of the time.
Dragonhunter: late season massive black and yellow dragonfly with heavy body and somewhat clubbed tail. Will hunt lakes, powerline cuts, fields. Perches on vegetation.
Black-shouldered Spinyleg: Late season. Can be found near/at lakes but not all that often. I see them more in the woods. Black and yellow dragonfly with VERY BIG spines on... "thighs" of hind legs.
Next we have darners. These are fairly large dragonflies, strong fliers that do not perch a whole lot.
Common Green Darner. If it's huge and blue and green, odds are good that this is it. They are generalists, will be found in some numbers near almost any body of water. Very common. On lakes, they fly patrols about four feet out from the shore. Does not perch for photographs.
Springtime Darner: Looks brown. Early season, patrols lake shoreline busily, with predictable route about 6" above the water. Does not perch where I've ever seen it.
And the Emerald group. Emeralds are almost impossible to net. Baskettails are a subset of emeralds that are more nettable.
Common baskettail. Early season, mostly-brown smallish pond dragonfly. Not a percher. Busy flight, quick and agile.
Prince baskettail. Big, excellent flier with dark patches on wings. Easy to see about 10 feet above the water, wing patterns are a good field mark. These are reasonably numerous but they don't land very often. They can be seen at breast of dam, surfing the wind and hunting in the early evenings.
And then we have the leftover smallish pond dragonflies in our area. (This is not all of them, just the ones that we have.)
Eastern Amberwing. Tiny, amber-winged late season dragonfly. We have many. They're unmistakable but not big on perching. The pictured one here is obelisk-ing, a behavior dragonflies do when it is too hot.
Eastern Pondhawk. Attractive small blue-green dragonfly, very quick. Look for white tips at end of tail.
Blue Dasher. Common pond dragonfly, smallish, light blue with tail tending darker toward the end. Frequently obelisks, perches on vegetation horizontally with wings swept down and forward, has stripes on sides.
Next we have pond Damselflies and Spreadwings. These are smaller, narrower, slighter odonates that are typically weaker fliers than dragonflies. If your odonate perches with wings out flat, it's probably a dragonfly. If it perches with wings folded flat over its abdomen, it's probably a damselfly. And if it can't make up its mind and perches with its wings half-folded, it's a spreadwing, which is a damselfly too.
Swamp Spreadwing: These are exceedingly plentiful. They're bigger than most pond damsels and do a hanging perch with their wings kind of halfway open, sort of between dragonflies (open) and damselflies (closed above their abdomen). Look in shoreline vegetation.
Variable dancer: Purple damselfly with a blue tipped abdomen. Common, tolerant of a wide range of habitats.
Eastern Forktail: Teeny green damselfly with blue tipped abdomen. Lines on "shoulders" are solid. We have many many of these but they are literally teeny. Not kidding about the teeny-ness.
Fragile Forktail: Teeny green damselfly. Lines on "shoulders" are exclamation-point shaped. Visible break, one short "dot" and one long "dash".
Lilypad Forktail: Tail tips downward, has blue on last three segments, resembles a bluet.
Bluets. We have a less-than-fully-explored assortment of bluets. I am not good at bluets. Bluets are very small and their field marks are very small and really I should make more of an effort with them. I am a failure on the bluet front.
Skimming bluet: weird wiggly shape on abdomen.
Turquoise Bluet:
Azure Bluet:
Slender Bluet:
Orange bluet: Is orange.
Vesper bluet: Is yellow with blue tip on end of abdomen
And not-quite a pond species, but a field-n-meadow species that I am including because I have a fancy picture of it that I took today.
Some Kind Of Meadowhawk. These are bright-red abdomens in late summer (they are about now to start coming out) to early fall. Look in fields, powerline cuts, meadows. Autumn Meadowhawks have solid red abdomens. Aside from the Autumn Meadowhawk, there are about three different kinds that look like this, but it's hard to tell them apart without a magnifying glass. We're gonna call this a Ruby Meadowhawk and let it go at that but it could also be a whitefaced or a cherry faced. Without a magnifying glass, we really can't tell for sure.
And a real hawk (juvenile redtailed hawk) that I saw today. Not an ode.
Because I'm doing kind of a field-guide-y approach to this, I'm gonna go by habitat (pond vs. not-pond) this time around. This section is the POND SPECIES section.
Skimmer group. These dragonflies perch on vegetation, bodies held horizontally. They patrol in short flights along the shoreline and aerial-duel with other males (of the same species) to defend territory. Skimmers are a very accessible group of dragonflies -- they are fairly big, not overly athletic, hang out where you can see them easily, and can be differentiated on the wing.
Widow Skimmer. Easily seen around the lake shore. We have tons of them. If this is not our most-common odonate, it's in the top five and certainly the easiest one to learn right off the bat. Males have pale blue/white and black wings.
Slaty Skimmer. Solid, navy-slate blue body with plain clear wings. Common but not very flashy, has a long season.
Spangled Skimmer. Medium-blue body, clear wings with tiny white pterostigma (pterostigma is science for "colored spots in the upper front corners of the wings"). The white pterostigma are particular to this species and a field mark for ID. The pterostigma in all ode wings is a localized area of heavier weight to help stabilize the wings and dampen vibration when they're in use. Yay science.
Twelve-spotted Skimmer. The most-flashy of the skimmer group. Unmistakable wing spot pattern. There simply isn't anything else like it.
Corporals are ground-perching dragonflies. They'll be on a dock, on an upside-down boat bottom, on the ground a lot more than on vegetation. We have two kinds, chalk-fronted and blue. Chalk-fronteds are very common, blues are infrequently seen.
Blue Corporal. Early season. Looks like a chalk-fronted corporal except more skittish in behavior and about 3/4 as big. And BLUE, not chalky.
Chalk-fronted Corporal: VERY common on docks, especially in June. Population drops off in mid-July.
Pennants are small dragonflies that perch at the very tops of vegetation, like, well, pennants. We have two kinds.
Calico Pennant: Common, fairly small dragonfly. Males have heavily patterned wings and a reddish overall color.
Halloween Pennant: Relatively uncommon late-season dragonfly. Wings are almost solid orange with black bands.
Clubtails are a more challenging group. They're not easy to tell apart and they're not very brightly colored.
Lancet Clubtail: small exceedingly common clubtail. Sort of a dull greenish-grey with a bit of yellow at the tail. If you see a small nondescript dragonfly at the lake or in the grassy fields near the lake, perching on the ground (not vegetation), it's probably this one.
Dusky Clubtail: If it's bigger than a Lancet clubtail and at the lake, it's this one. They look very similar. Duskys are also ground-perching most of the time.
Dragonhunter: late season massive black and yellow dragonfly with heavy body and somewhat clubbed tail. Will hunt lakes, powerline cuts, fields. Perches on vegetation.
Black-shouldered Spinyleg: Late season. Can be found near/at lakes but not all that often. I see them more in the woods. Black and yellow dragonfly with VERY BIG spines on... "thighs" of hind legs.
Next we have darners. These are fairly large dragonflies, strong fliers that do not perch a whole lot.
Common Green Darner. If it's huge and blue and green, odds are good that this is it. They are generalists, will be found in some numbers near almost any body of water. Very common. On lakes, they fly patrols about four feet out from the shore. Does not perch for photographs.
Springtime Darner: Looks brown. Early season, patrols lake shoreline busily, with predictable route about 6" above the water. Does not perch where I've ever seen it.
And the Emerald group. Emeralds are almost impossible to net. Baskettails are a subset of emeralds that are more nettable.
Common baskettail. Early season, mostly-brown smallish pond dragonfly. Not a percher. Busy flight, quick and agile.
Prince baskettail. Big, excellent flier with dark patches on wings. Easy to see about 10 feet above the water, wing patterns are a good field mark. These are reasonably numerous but they don't land very often. They can be seen at breast of dam, surfing the wind and hunting in the early evenings.
And then we have the leftover smallish pond dragonflies in our area. (This is not all of them, just the ones that we have.)
Eastern Amberwing. Tiny, amber-winged late season dragonfly. We have many. They're unmistakable but not big on perching. The pictured one here is obelisk-ing, a behavior dragonflies do when it is too hot.
Eastern Pondhawk. Attractive small blue-green dragonfly, very quick. Look for white tips at end of tail.
Blue Dasher. Common pond dragonfly, smallish, light blue with tail tending darker toward the end. Frequently obelisks, perches on vegetation horizontally with wings swept down and forward, has stripes on sides.
Next we have pond Damselflies and Spreadwings. These are smaller, narrower, slighter odonates that are typically weaker fliers than dragonflies. If your odonate perches with wings out flat, it's probably a dragonfly. If it perches with wings folded flat over its abdomen, it's probably a damselfly. And if it can't make up its mind and perches with its wings half-folded, it's a spreadwing, which is a damselfly too.
Swamp Spreadwing: These are exceedingly plentiful. They're bigger than most pond damsels and do a hanging perch with their wings kind of halfway open, sort of between dragonflies (open) and damselflies (closed above their abdomen). Look in shoreline vegetation.
Variable dancer: Purple damselfly with a blue tipped abdomen. Common, tolerant of a wide range of habitats.
Eastern Forktail: Teeny green damselfly with blue tipped abdomen. Lines on "shoulders" are solid. We have many many of these but they are literally teeny. Not kidding about the teeny-ness.
Fragile Forktail: Teeny green damselfly. Lines on "shoulders" are exclamation-point shaped. Visible break, one short "dot" and one long "dash".
Lilypad Forktail: Tail tips downward, has blue on last three segments, resembles a bluet.
Bluets. We have a less-than-fully-explored assortment of bluets. I am not good at bluets. Bluets are very small and their field marks are very small and really I should make more of an effort with them. I am a failure on the bluet front.
Skimming bluet: weird wiggly shape on abdomen.
Turquoise Bluet:
Azure Bluet:
Slender Bluet:
Orange bluet: Is orange.
Vesper bluet: Is yellow with blue tip on end of abdomen
And not-quite a pond species, but a field-n-meadow species that I am including because I have a fancy picture of it that I took today.
Some Kind Of Meadowhawk. These are bright-red abdomens in late summer (they are about now to start coming out) to early fall. Look in fields, powerline cuts, meadows. Autumn Meadowhawks have solid red abdomens. Aside from the Autumn Meadowhawk, there are about three different kinds that look like this, but it's hard to tell them apart without a magnifying glass. We're gonna call this a Ruby Meadowhawk and let it go at that but it could also be a whitefaced or a cherry faced. Without a magnifying glass, we really can't tell for sure.
And a real hawk (juvenile redtailed hawk) that I saw today. Not an ode.
