{"id":1247,"date":"2012-06-25T13:00:32","date_gmt":"2012-06-25T17:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/?p=1247"},"modified":"2012-06-25T12:45:55","modified_gmt":"2012-06-25T16:45:55","slug":"along-the-contoocook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/?p=1247","title":{"rendered":"Along the Contoocook"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday afternoon was sunny with the temperature in the mid-70’s… perfect weather for odes.\u00a0 Looking to explore a ecological niche different from the lake or beaver swamp that I usually haunt,\u00a0 I headed for the Contoocook River to “hunt”.<\/p>\n

My first stop was the Powder Mill Pond WMA<\/a> in Greenfield; this site is above the dam but at the far end of the “pond”,\u00a0 just where the water narrows back down\u00a0 The water level was very low.<\/p>\n

The variety of\u00a0 species in a very small area was quite remarkable.<\/p>\n

Along the river banks (the first three photos were taken here), there were numerous chalk-fronted corporals cruising the area. There were also many skimming bluets right at the waters edge.<\/p>\n

I saw a single twelve-spotted skimmer. I stalked it for quite some time but I did not get a photograph because I never saw\u00a0 it come lower than about eight feet off the ground. It was perched on a pine bough maybe twenty five feet up the last time I saw it.<\/p>\n

A short (maybe 500 feet) walk from the river is a meadow off the parking lot where the next three photos were taken. While I was concentrating on the lancet clubtail, I noticed some movement off to the side. I turned to see a male widow skimmer (which I had never seen before) perched on a stalk of grass. I was able to grab a single frame before it flew off. Alas, I was too close (within the close focus distance of my lens + extension tube) and\u00a0 the photo was not sharp. I guess that I’ll need to head back there again soon and continue the hunt!<\/p>\n

The last four photos were taken at my second stop, a slow moving part of the river below the dam at the paper mill <\/a>in Bennington. The stream bluets were fairly common and there were small numbers of\u00a0 female river jewelwings; I did not see any males.\u00a0 I also saw (but did not photograph) a few dragonflies (probably slaty skimmers) along the edge of the paper mills’ lawn.<\/p>\n

On the way home I stopped by the Tenney’s Farm for what are probably the last of the strawberries for the season. We had them for dessert over vanilla ice cream after dinner. Yum!<\/p>\n

[nggallery id=147]<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday afternoon was sunny with the temperature in the mid-70’s… perfect weather for odes.\u00a0 Looking to explore a ecological niche different from the lake or beaver swamp that I usually haunt,\u00a0 I headed for the Contoocook River to “hunt”. My first stop was the Powder Mill Pond WMA in Greenfield; this site is above the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[92,5,28],"tags":[13,12],"class_list":["post-1247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monadnock-region","category-odontates","category-other-insects","tag-damselflies","tag-dragonflies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1247"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1257,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247\/revisions\/1257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}