Yesterday afternoon, I took a walk down the road at the Harris Center property on Brimstone Corner Road. The temperature was in the mid-70s F and the skies were mostly sunny.
Just before 3 PM, I lathered up with “bug stuff” and headed out. Three hours later, the mosquitoes drove me home. I don’t know if the “bug stuff” had worn off or if it was the hour but the mosquitoes were viscous on the walk home.
This property has a number of diverse habitats frequented by odes… sunny wood roadsides, old log landings in various state of regrowth and a large beaver pond with its associated outlet stream. Diverse habitat means diversity of species and I was not disappointed.
The most common odes by far were meadow hawks, I saw roughly three dozen. Yellow individuals (females and immature males) outnumbered red ones (mature males) by about four to one. The meadow hawks were present in sunny spots along the road as well as in the old log landings.
The next most common species were the spreadwings in the stream just down stream from the culverts; I counted about a dozen. There were also a small number of ebony jewelwings present here and two variable dancers (one of each sex).
Over at the beaver pond, I saw roughly half a dozen male slatey skimmers. They are hard to count has they were, for the most part constantly moving. The aerial “dogfights” among the slatey skimmers are fun to watch.
The find of the day was a single black saddlebags in a sunny spot at the junction of two woods roads. This species is fairly rare around here… rare enough that there are many summers when I do not see one.
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