Memorial Day Weekend

May 26, 2008 at 4:12 pm (Uncategorized)

This past weekend kicked off the ode season for me. Friday we drove down to Jamestown to meet Karen’s old Girl Scout troupe to spend the weekend camping. On the way we stopped by the Jamestown Audubon to take a walk around the ponds. It was a bit chilly and windy, but I saw my first dragonfly of the season at the first pond we saw. It was a Common Baskettail teneral that was clinging to the grass on the edge of the pond. I usually find mass emergences this weekend so it was right on schedule.

Soon after I saw my usual first damselfly, the good old Eastern Forktail. It is always a pleasure to walk the trails of the Jamestown Audubon.

We got to Camp Timbercrest later that night and enjoyed our usual Friday night pizza sandwich dinner in the pie irons. The next morning I met mon@rch at his bird banding site before we headed over to the Allenburg Bog. We only saw a few odes there, but the rest of our discoveries more than made up for it. Visit Tom’s blog to see what else we saw! Walking in the field that borders the bog property we saw a mosaic darner, most likely a Springtime Darner. At the open bog site we saw a Common Green Darner and an Aurora Damsel. This was the first time I had seen an Aurora at the bog, but this is not all that surprising since I have never been to the bog during their flight period.

After I left Tom, I headed back to Timbercrest to take the girls on an afternoon hike. Around the inlet to the camp “lake” I picked up a hitchhiker on my pant-leg, a Northern Pygmy Clubtail teneral. This was not a first for the county, but it was the first time I have ever seen one. Hopefully I will be having many more dragonfly encounters this summer!