Recent Rounds: Wetlands to Other Things

We are finally drying out  a bit after the excessive rains.  Still lots of flooding though, and many fields under water.  I noticed some fields were under about 2m of water, mind you they were in flood plains!  No doubt lots of crop insurance claims will be seen this year.

Only high ground places were walkable the last couple of days.  Yesterday I did not get far in Reid CA.  The river had backed up in the ancient river channel.  I have seen this before, but not this time of year.  Seems to be more frequent!

Making my usual rounds this week, here are some things I found.  Wednesday at Reid the wetland skippers were enjoying this wet summer.

Broad-winged Skipper

Dukes' Skipper

Least Skipper

A couple of common moths in the back field:

Lucerne Moth

Green Clover-worm Moth

And, of course the Royal River Cruisers were hanging around.

Twelve-spotted Skimmer (F)

Thursday I decided to venture into Elgin County.  I went as far as Port Stanley lagoons, then worked my way back.  The lagoons have been wonderful for breeding waterbirds.  American Coots and Pied-billed Grebes among other things nested there this summer.

American Coot with cootlets

Pied-billed Grebes with grebelets

I stopped by Southwold Earth Works, but it was extremely quiet for everything.  There are a lot of American Beech trees here, but every one is either dead or dying due to the blight.  This prized tree I photograph every year, is completely dead.  What a shame.

Next stop was the Storey Wetland at John E. Pearce P. P.  I had hoped to see the Comet Darner here as in past years, but no luck.  Just the common stuff.

Spot-winged Glider

Twelve-spotted Skimmer

Transverse-banded Flower Fly

Heading back west, I stopped briefly at the Clear Creek quarry.  I wanted to get one of those bluets in hand to make sure it was a Slender.

While here, at least one Comet Darner was patrolling the pond, but I never bothered to get a photo.

Friday, I stayed close to home.

Common Buckeye at Peers Wetland

Some garden insects: 

Wilkes's Mining Bee

Ectemnius Maculosus (?)

Common Thick-leg Fly

Today was a Lambton Wildlife outing to Sydenham River Nature Reserve.  I always take advantage of these in order to get into the reserve.  Today's focus was odonates.

There was not a big number by any means, but we had a good time looking around.

Powdered Dancer

Azure Bluet

Ebony Jewelwing

Unfortunately, the river was running very high (for obvious reasons!), and that eliminated much good habitat.  At least is was a good 2m lower than it was at its peak a couple days ago!

I was hoping to get a good look for bluets and dancers along the river's edge on this outing, but those hopes were dashed, obviously.  I suspect Blue-ringed Dancer is here, and perhaps Dusky as well.

Here is a list of species we saw at the reserve:

Ebony Jewelwing, American Rubyspot, Blue-fronted Dancer, Powdered Dancer, Azure Bluet, Stream Bluet, Eastern Forktail, Fragile Forktail, Common Green Darner, Black-shouldered Spinyleg, Royal River Cruiser, Eastern Pondhawk, Widow Skimmer, Twelve-spotted Skimmer, Blue Dasher, Spot-winged Glider, Eastern Amberwing, Common Whitetail, Ruby Meadowhawk, Black Saddlebags.

Some butterflies included Red-spotted Purple.

Not much in the way of birds, but I was not paying too much attention to them.  This Belted Kingfisher was at the bridge earlier in the day.

Since Shetland CA was on the way home, I briefly stopped at the boat launch.  Thankfully, the water level had receded to a reasonable point.  Not much flying, but maybe things drowned this week!

I did see some Blue-ringed Dancers among a few other common things.