Backyard and Beyond

Starting out from Brooklyn, an amateur naturalist explores our world.

As John Burroughs said, “The place to observe nature is where you are.”

Odes

Spot-winged Glider, in a rare perch. They can spend hours in the air.Blue Dasher male, quite common and frequently perched.Eastern Pondhawk male.Male Painted SkimmerThis damselfly is peculiar. I can find no matching ID for it, and both iNaturalist and bugguide.net remain silent to my queries. I think it may be a maturing andromorph (that is, male-like) female Eastern Forktail. Lam illustrates six forms of Ischnura verticalis; Paulson pictures five forms. None of their examples are quite this one, though, Bar-winged Skimmer male. A new species for me.

All spotted in either Brooklyn or the Bronx recently. A quick reminder: males are usually patrolling water bodies, which females only visit for mating purposes.And here’s a female Common Whitetail, away from the water…

mthew

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4 responses to “Odes”

  1. elwnyc

    Hi Matthew,

    Re: your peculiar damselfly – are you on Facebook?

    There’s a group on there that is extremely knowledgeable about odes: https://www.facebook.com/groups/odonata/

    Reply
    1. mthew

      I left Facebook on inauguration day 2017. It’s a criminal enterprise that profits off the cannibalization of democracy.

      Reply
  2. Eva

    Hi Mathew, I don’t know how you do it, but your pictures are breathtaking. Thank you so much for sharing them with us.
    We had plenty of skimmers passing over Sheepshead Bay. What a sight. They went hungry. I planted a few patches of wildflowers for insects in recent years. The sad part is there’s not much buzzing around this year. Mostly little hoverflies. Even last year was so much richer with lots of different kinds of bees, flies and beetles. The lawn is covered with a sea of white clover blooms, that rarely get visited by stray bumble bees. It kind’a spoils the spring for me 😦

    Reply
    1. mthew

      Thanks! I do it with lots of waiting. Waiting for them to perch… some species tend to return to the same perch over and over.

      Starting to see more insects the last few days. Let’s hope that it’s just been the cool, wet spring. Most of them like it pretty warm.

      Reply

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