Pronghorn Clubtail and Painted Skimmer

Today I was a leader for a BioBlitz happening at the St.Williams Forestry Tract in Norfolk County. From the advertisement: "A BioBlitz is an intense period of biological inventorying in an attempt to record all the living species within a designated area." My job was to lead a group of people (turned out to be me +1)with a focus on reptiles and amphibians, while other leaders looked for other things. I pretty much just recorded everything I saw.

As far as reptiles and amphibians went, we didn't find anything terribly exciting - just the common stuff.

Butterflies - 15 species, nothing unusual.

Birds - Pretty much just the expected species, but a highlight for me was my first "orange variant" Scarlet Tanager. Scarlet Tanagers are usually scarlet red with black wings but occasionally an individual will turn up that is orange in colour.

Dragonflies - 10 species, with several highlights for me.

Highlight 1) My first Painted Skimmer. I saw a large dragonfly flying over the open field at St.Williams that had very yellowish wings, that appeared to have markings on them. This darn thing wouldn't land and with it darting all over the place it was hard to get a great look. Never-the-less I'm fairly confident it was a Painted Skimmer due to it's size, behaviour, and wing colouration.

Highlight 2) A Pronghorn Clubtail (photo below) was an unexpected surprise when it landed just in front of us allowing a few photos. A dry open field is not exactly where you expect to see Clubtails, but it happens!



Highlight 3) While watching a Snowberry Clearwing moth visit some flowers a large dragonfly whipped in and grabbed some large prey item. We feared the clearwing ended up as dinner, but it wasn't the case. A Common Green Darner had caught and proceeded to eat a Common Whitetail, a fairly good size meal. Dragonflies truly are voracious predators.

 An Aurora Damsel was also nice to find. This species is identifiable by the lack of postocular spots on the eyes (no blue markings on eyes), and blue over yellow on the thorax. Another clue is that it rests with its wings partly open similiar to a spreadwing.


The One(s) That Got Away.

It's a bit of birding cliche, missing a rare bird my a matter of minutes..or seconds in some cases. I think I'd much prefer to miss a bird by a few hours than by a few seconds. Maybe this is why I've seen some birders in full out sprints to go see a rare bird (Black-throated Gray Warbler in Hamilton). In any event, I missed a pretty good bird yesterday by a matter of minutes - a Lark Sparrow. I was doing some birding on my own at the old park at Long Point, and was pretty happy to see both singing males of Hooded and Mourning Warblers. Then I got a text from Gregor Beck who was helping our friend Catherine Boothby with her birdathon. They had just found (or re-found from earlier in the week), a Lark Sparrow in the new provincial park. I rushed over there but to no avail - I missed it by a matter of minutes. I wasn't too upset since I've seen them in Ontario before, but it might be the only chance I get to see one this year. Oh well - I'm not doing a big year so I won't lose any sleep over it.

 Record shot of the Lark Sparrow seen by Gregor Beck and Catherine Boothby (photo credit).

The other bird that got away was a heron. I was riding along in a van when I saw a heron flying over way off in the distance. Right away it didn't look right so I yelled for the van to stop and I hopped out. It was a partially back-lit bird pretty far off so all I could really see was structure and flight pattern. It basically looked like a small, dark, Great Blue Heron with a much faster wing beat. The legs were dangling out the back so I was pretty confident that it wasn't a Green Heron or a Black-crowned Night Heron. Considering the viewing conditions I won't take any guesses as to species, just that I think a good one got away. This one bugs me a little more since finding, and most importantly IDENTIFYING rare birds is partly why we all put so much time in. Not that looking at Scarlet Tanagers and warblers isn't satisfying enough of course.

Long Point was "dripping" with Scarlet Tanagers yesterday. Warblers were diverse, but not so numerous.