Early yesterday afternoon I took a walk up the unmaintained section of Brimstone Corner Road with the ode rig in hand. Well, maybe “walk” is the wrong term… “crawl” or “stroll” is probably a better term. It took me roughly two hours to cover maybe two-thirds of a mile. I stopped at every sunny spot along the road looking for odes. I got my aerobic exercise on the return trip as I only took about ten minutes to get back home when I decided to turn around. In the late afternoon, I again succumbed to the siren call of the myriad of odes that were about and roamed the yard for an additional hour.
The temperature was in the upper 60s F and it was breezy. The skies were partly cloudy with lots of fast moving, puffy summer-time clouds.
The most common species present, by far, were chalk-fronted corporals. Every sunny spot on the road had six or more individuals sunning themselves. Next most common were the whitefaces, probably Hudsonian whitefaces, but telling the various whiteface species apart (especially the females) without netting them is beyond my capability. All of the rest of the species I saw (and photographed) were represented by much smaller numbers, in most cases I saw only one or two individuals.
I observed (but did not photograph) only two damselflies the entire time I was out. A female aurora damsel in the early afternoon and a female bluet in the yard. My guess is that it was too windy for the relatively weak flying damsels and that they were all hunkered down as odes do in unsuitable (to them) weather.
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Well, thanks to you, I noticed a few odes flying through my yard as I was mowing the other day. One was fatter than the other and mostly whit while the other was quite slim and black with green sections. I didn’t even bother to get my camera – not ready for the big time yet.
However, your compilation is – as usual – wonderful! Like the detail in each.
Comment by Joe Kennedy — 6 June 2022 @ 4:26 PM