After being away for a week, I should have been mowing the lawn. Instead, I was prowling the periphery for odes with camera in hand!
In addition to odes there was a pair of swallowtails taking advantage of the wildflowers growing in an area that I do not mow until the wild strawberries have ripened.
The lawn is still not mowed!
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Friday was one of those quintessential summer days in New Hampshire… low humidity, temperature in the mid-70’s and sunny. Thus, we packed a lunch and headed to Pitcher Mountain in Stoddard. The plan was for Joan to pick blueberries and me to photograph.
Things worked out well. Joan got about three quarts and I got these:
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Yesterday, I “stole” an hour a midst the wedding preparations to wander the meadow and pond at the Bass Farm.
There were many male common white-tails patrolling territories along the shore of the pond and, although I spent quite some time stalking them, I did not get even a single shot of them. I also saw a small number of spreadwings along the pond.
There where large numbers of a small very nondescript brown dragonfly (which I have not had time to identify) in the meadow grasses. There were also many pollinators (mostly bees but also some butterflies) among the wild flowers in the meadow. These were much easier to photograph!
The last two photos are of blossoms in the flower beads around the house
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The first week of July saw photographic opportunities during an afternoon on Gregg Lake, a late afternoon kayak jaunt on a nearby beaver swamp and around the yard.
The most common, by far, odes on the Lake that afternoon were lancet clubtails. I also saw (but did not get photographs of) a couple of damselflies, including one variable dancer.
The beaver swamp was teeming with two species: frosted whitefaces and swamp spreadwings. The flowers were also found in the swamp.
The butterfly was very interested in nectaring on the flowers in Joan’s garden and kept returning despite my scaring it off a number of times.
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Sunday morning found us doing chores around the house. But after I finished mowing the lawn and erecting posts for the pea fence in the garden, I spent some time hunting dragonflies around the yard. There were at least four different species present.
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In the afternoon, we put the canoe in the lake and headed down to camp. I lucked in to a swallowtail nectaring on some flowers right at our beach and it stayed put long enough for me to get the camera ready and take about half-dozen shots before it disappeared.
As for dragonflies, there were numerous individuals of the frustrating kind (a small clubtail of some sort, I think) cruising the lake… I call them frustrating since they never seem to land and thus are next to impossible to photograph.
A brief walk in the woods along the lake shore yielded another (as yet unidentified) dragonfly and a small green moth that was perfectly camouflaged sitting on the frond of a fern. I only noticed it because it flapped its wings exactly once.
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Monday afternoon we headed back to camp for another jaunt. The frustrating species was present in good numbers over the lake and I discovered a dragonfly carcass entangled in a spider web in the bushes at the edge of the lake.
Most of my photographic time was spent in a small clearing just off the the lake which has been very productive in years past. The productivity was also good this day. The number of individuals was small but there were three or four species present. I’m still working on the identifications… this is not my strong point!
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Last Monday (the Columbus Day Holiday), Joan and I took a drive to Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge in Middletown Road Island.
This refuge, which is about a 45 minute drive from the house, is one of my favorite photographic haunts in winter when there are many ducks, including harlequins, in residence.
I suspected that early October would be too early for many overwintering birds and this proved correct. However, we were pleasantly surprised by the abundance of butterflies. We saw dozens of monarchs, presumably on their migration south, as well as smaller numbers of three or four other species.
Flowers for nectaring were few and far between… the most abundant being goldenrod… so I suspect that we were seeing the trailing edge of the migratory wave.
Photographically, I went equipped for birds, taking my Sigma 50-500mm lens. While this is not the ideal equipment for shooting butterflies, it is serviceable with subjects as large as monarchs as long as you are willing to accept some cropping of the final images. Thus, most of these shots represent about half of the full frame.
Here are a half dozen images from the afternoon:
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Well… here it is, the end of August and we are back home trying to get our heads wrapped around the idea of going back to work! (I know we won’t get much sympathy from those who did work all or most of the summer!)
I quipped to a number of people over the last few weeks that we we spent the summer practicing for retirement. Of course, I also had to say that we seemed to be getting pretty good at it and thus maybe we should try the real thing. Alas, the reality of finances won’t allow for that quite yet.
Peak time for odontates is the month of July… by the time the end of August rolls around the numbers of dragonflies and damselflies are way down from the peak. Also, having spent the past six or seven weeks actively photographing the critters adds a feeling that there is not much too see.
These factors, and having the weather a bit cooler, lead us to spend a few days taking some hikes around the area… we revisited places that we had not seen in some years and saw some new spots that were not lake-side habitat. We also found some new photographic subjects.
We spent time in the area between Gregg Lake and Willard Pond on two days and visited the McCabe Forest (a Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests reservation along the Contoocook River in Antrim.) I also spent an hour or so one afternoon in the fields at the Bass Farm found a couple of cooperative butterflies to photograph.
On the ledges atop Goodhue Hill, one sunny early afternoon, we watched dozens of darners (one family of large dragonflies) feasting on insects that we could not see. They were in constant flight… which explains why I have no photographs! (Note to Joan: I can get photos of dragonflies in flight… it will just require a bit of new equipment!!!)
Anyway, here are a half dozen photos from these hikes:
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In the interest of exploring new ecological niches, a few weeks back Joan and I took a hike at the Loveren’s Mill Cedar Swamp. This large preserve, in the northern part of Antrim, is owned and maintained by the Nature Conservancy.
The trail winds its way along the North Branch river which was loaded with Ebony Jewelwings, a damselfly that prefers fast running water. In the sunny spots along the roads we often saw white-faced meadowhawks; these were also present in the cedar swamp proper. In the pine woods we saw (but could not photograph) at least two different darners. I’m not sure if they were different species or male and female of the same species… the darn things (I know, bad pun) did not sit still long enough to get a good look at them. Lastly, we also saw a butterfly that makes a good demonstration of camouflage.
We also scared up a young bull moose while we were walking down the trail. We were about 50 feet away when he jumped up from behind a large rock where he was taking a siesta. He paused briefly (trying to decide which way to go?) before taking off down the trail away from us. I’m still not sure who was more surprised… the moose or Joan!
No moose photos though! One of the “problems” with the odonate rig is that with the lens mounted on the extension tube you can not focus more than about six feet away. So, by the time I got the tube off and the lens remounted, the big fellow was long gone. I can hear Joan now. “Excuses… excuses, a real photographer would have gotten the shot’!
Anyway, here are the photos, that I did get:
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