Adventure camp begins!

Silver spotted skipper looking for nectar on a pink sock

The first week of adventure camp for this summer has already come and gone.  I had the usual batch of kids who know little to nothing about the outdoors.  They need to be reminded not to throw sticks and stones, not to shout constantly, not to toss the catch nets or twirl them around like batons.  Most have never seen a crayfish, though apparently they have eaten lobster, as that’s the first thing they mention when they see a crayfish.  They do like to watch the crayfish fight, though.
 

This past week, in addition to the usual stream denizens, we were visited by several flying insects.  A dragonfly of some species perched on someone’s head for a minute or so.  A silver-spotted skipper came to perch on someone else’s shoes and socks.  Later, I discovered this species likes blue and purple flowers, so I’m thinking it was attracted by those brightly-colored socks.

As always, the kids seem to have a good time, for which I am grateful, and they catch crayfish big and small.  This group preferred the tiniest crayfish, while most other groups argue over who’s caught the largest one.  We had a few sightings of salamanders, but none made it into my buckets.  Before the kids arrived, I fed the local minnows and small fish a few pieces of bread, but this batch of kids was way too impatient to have any luck netting the fish.

I can only hope that somewhere along the way, before too long, that these kids develop a much more nuanced relationship with their environment.  Right now, the best I can say is that at least they are enthusiastic once they get outside.

Calico Pennant

I wasn't going to post this photo, as it's not as clear as it should be. But because I also didn't know what kind of dragonfly this was, I used the photo to help identify it. And as I learned more about this Calico Pennant dragonfly, also known as an Elisa Skimmer, I decided to go ahead and run the photo anyway. This one is a male. The females are yellow where this fellow is red.


The Calico Pennant is quite widespread in some areas. Pennsylvania isn't one of those. In my region, the calico is only reported in my county and two neighboring ones. Then there's a gap of many counties, reports of it in the western part of the state and again in several counties in the eastern part of the state with more gaps in between.


Oddly, at least to me, this pattern is also repeated thoughout most of the calico pennant's range, with the exception of Ohio and New Jersey, where it's reported in almost every county. So I'm wondering, do these reports have more to do with the people reporting sightings or with the dragonfly's actual range? Doesn't it seem odd that it's found everywhere in Ohio and New Jersey but only reported sporadically elsewhere?


The calico pennant I found was over on the new pond at Roundtop, and its habitat is described as ponds and marshes, which is the typical habitat of virtually every dragonfly in the world. Nothing seems unusual or atypical about that. The new pond isn't atypically large or small and it doesn't have much in the way of marshy vegetation, like cattails, along its edges. So why would this lovely dragonfly appear to have so many gaps in its range? I suspect these alleged gaps don't really exist. I think this beauty is simply unreported or under-reported. And since now is the time the calico pennant is busy flying around, maybe this would also be a good time for people to get out there and look for it. Let's fill in a few of these gaps!

Widow Skimmer

This morning’s photo was a lucky one for me as I have notoriously poor luck taking photos of dragonflies. Last night it stormed again, though this time I didn’t get hit with the worst of the wind and lightning. So this morning it is foggy and still raining a bit, and I was planning to get a foggy morning forest photo. While I was setting up that shot, I suddenly saw this Widow Skimmer on a leaf almost in front of me. Miracle of miracles, it didn’t fly before I got a quick shot.

Widow skimmers are a common dragonfly in most of the U.S. They are probably the most common ospecies here on Roundtop. This dragonfly got the name "widow" as the male doesn’t stay with the female after she lays her eggs, as most of them do. This dragonfly is, I think, a male, though perhaps not quite an adult male. Males have white areas on the outside of the black area on the wing. This one has a bit of that, though his white area isn’t nearly as defined or as large as others I’ve seen.

There’s a good site called NJOdes (for New Jersey Odonates) that specializes in dragonflies and has tons of good photos and information to help ID them, at least for the New Jersey species. Still, many dragonflies are pretty widespread, so even folks not from the east coast may well find what they’re trying to ID here.

So today is likely going to be a long day for me. The storm came through last night around 2 a.m. (I think), bringing thunder, lightning, rain, wind and the sudden appearance of 60 lb. Dog on my bed. This time, the closest lightning strike was about a mile away, plenty close enough. The storm continued to around 4 a.m., when things finally quieted enough for me to fall back asleep. As I said, this time I didn’t get the worst of the storm, but a short night’s sleep will likely keep me out of sorts, at least until I get an extra cup of coffee.