Last year I embarked on a new odonate project: to study the species found at one tiny park along the Jock River. This park, originally named Bow of the Jock Park before it was changed to Terry Carisse Park in 2006, consists of a narrow strip of green space that runs perhaps 500 or 700 meters along the shore of the Jock River on an elevated bank about two meters above the water. The park itself consists mostly of manicured lawn with a wooded swamp at the north end where Mahoney Creek empties into the Jock River, two launching areas for canoes and kayaks, a playground, and a thick band of riparian vegetation that almost completely blocks all views of the river from one end of the park to the other. The Jock River itself is smaller than the Rideau River, much more sluggish, without a lot of rocks or rapids that would attract the clubtails and spiketails found in Gatineau Park. It hasn’t been surveyed for odonates as well as the Ottawa River has, mainly because much of it runs through private agricultural or residential land, with only a few small parks with even smaller access points in Richmond and Ottawa.
I started my ode survey last year on July 2nd, which was a little late for the early-flying emeralds and baskettails. This year I made sure to start my surveys earlier, spending a hot, sunny afternoon there on June 2nd. When I arrived I walked the length of the park, hoping to find some baskettails foraging over the lawn the way the darners had in the fall. Sure enough, I soon saw a group of three flying together in an area where the screen of vegetation along the bank thinned out, providing a large opening looking out onto the water. The large brown spot on the base of the hindwings made them easy to identify them on the wing as Common Baskettails, but I caught one so I could add it to my project on iNaturalist.
Once I finished examining the baskettail in the hand I placed it on a branch and photographed it with its wings spread:
As usual there were Sedge Sprites and Fragile Forktails in the sun-facing vegetation, and even a Dot-tailed Whiteface perching on a stick above the water. This was the first time I had seen this common species here. I couldn’t find any bluets of any colour (blue, black, orange, or rainbow-hued), though I wasn’t really expecting to see any yet; my plan was to keep returning over the summer to get a clearer picture of their full flight season.
I returned on June 10th. It was not as hot as it had been a week earlier, but I found a few new species on the wing, including both black-type bluets (Skimming and Stream Bluets) as well as Rainbow Bluet. The Fragile Forktails and Common Baskettails were still there, and I even managed to capture a photograph of a baskettail in flight. However, it was the Rainbow Bluets that impressed me the most, as I saw both males and females in the vegetation and saw at least eleven different individuals altogether.
Males are more brilliantly coloured than females, and their orange eyes make them stand out in the vegetation. The eyes of the females are less vivid in colour, and while the stripes on top of the thorax are pale blue, the sides of the thorax are yellowish-green. The thin blue stripe down the top of segment 9 is a useful field mark for identifying female Rainbow Bluets; sometimes I’ve confused recently emerged females with recently emerged Stream Bluets, as both are a pale yellowish colour along the sides and both have small blue eyespots connected by a thin line. However, the tip of the abdomen in each species is distinctive.
The Rainbow Bluets were still present on my next visit on June 21st, though I only saw about five. There were no Common Baskettails present when I arrived, but I did see a large Prince Baskettail gliding overhead, which was not a new species for the park as I’d seen one last year behaving the same way. I wasn’t able to get a photo for iNaturalist on either occasion. New for my list was a pair of Taiga Bluets in tandem, a very common species found in such a wide variety of habitats that I wasn’t surprised to find them here. As usual, both Eastern and Fragile Forktails were present, as were both Stream and Skimming Bluets. Of these four damselflies, the Skimming Bluets were the ones most closely associated with the water; most were on floating vegetation or in the sedges on the bank of the river. In contrast, I saw many forktails and a few Stream Bluets in the vegetation adjacent to the lawn.
The Stream Bluet is much larger than the Skimming Bluet, and only segment 9 of the male’s abdomen is completely blue; segment 8 is black on top, with blue angled sides.
My best find that day, however, was a damselfly from a different family. I don’t often see spreadwings at Terry Carisse Park, so I was quite happy when I found one perching on a stem emerging from the water a short distance from the bank. It was male, and also looked quite large; since it was too far out to net I took several photos hoping to get a clear shot of the tip of the abdomen. Fortunately my photos showed the shape of the claspers quite well and confirmed its identity as an Elegant Spreadwing.
The Elegant Spreadwing has a metallic green thorax and abdomen that is similar in appearance to both Emerald and Amber-winged Spreadwings, but the three males can be differentiated by the shape of the claspers at the tip of the abdomen. The Latin name inaequalis refers to the unequal lengths of the claspers; the lower ones (paraprocts) are visibly longer than the upper ones (the cerci), with squared tips. You don’t always need to have them in hand to see this; sometimes a good photo is enough to identify them.
Last year I’d had one in the same spot that was just a bit too far out for clear photos; it had been perching on a stem on the other side of Mahoney Creek, showing only its side. It was great to see this one so much closer, as I think it’s a really beautiful bug! Elegant Spreadwings can usually be found in bogs and swampy areas, permanent ponds, the quiet bays of lakes, and slow-moving streams on occasion. This spreadwing is the one most likely to be seen flying over open water, and when they land they prefer to perch on emergent vegetation just above the water – most of my sightings of this species at the Mississippi Snye near Morris Island and Petrie Island have been at the water.
So far it’s been a great start to the ode season at Terry Carisse Park. The Elegant Spreadwing and Rainbow Bluets are back, and I’ve added three new species to the list of odonates found there. I can’t wait to see what turns up next!
The Pathless Wood 