Under Clear Skies

Red Rock Skimmer – Luke Tiller

Following David Bell’s talk at the Pasadena Audubon Society monthly meeting this past May we decided it would be nice to follow that up with a walk introducing PAS members to the world of dragonflies and damselflies (odanata or odes). This trip was scheduled for 10:00am Sunday July 17th and lead by Kimball Garrett and David Bell.

Unlike birds, dragonflies are not early risers, so those that hadn’t spent their morning on the LA River (see previous post) got a rather more leisurely start time for a PAS walk than usual.  Participants met at the new (and rather attractively laid out) Oro Vista Park in Sunland/Tujunga and even prior to the official start David had managed to both point out and explain the differences between a couple of glider dragonflies (Wandering and Spot-winged) that were milling about near the park parking lot.

Flame Skimmer – Luke Tiller

After the group assembled we made a two minute drive down to Haines Creek a weedy, riparian area created by runoff from the local neighborhood. Here we picked up a few relatively common dragonfly and damselfly species that often inhabit these kind of habitats including a brief sighting of a Cardinal Meadowhawk before it was unceremoniously grabbed from its perch by a passing Black Phoebe! Among the common species we managed to work on a few basic ID challenges: Neon vs Flame Skimmer and Western Pondhawk vs Blue Dasher.

As well as having a nice mix of odes at Haine’s Creek we also had a couple of interesting  bird species to look at and listen to including a European Goldfinch (which I’d photographed here a few days before). Most exciting though surely was a Golden Eagle that was being initially harassed by a Red-tailed Hawk as it soared over us and slowly glided away. Haine’s Creek is an interesting riparian pond area that has hosted a number of interesting birds in migration and is one of those sites I’m contemplating for my series of local free walks this fall (details here).

Sooty Dancer – Luke Tiller

With a nice selection of odes under our belt our next stop was a at Wildwood Picnic area in the Angeles National Forest. Here we hoped to pick up a few species along the creek that required slightly different habitats and water. The initial immediate hit here were the incredible views of arguably the regions prettiest damselfly: American Rubyspot (images and information here). As well as the rubyspot we also managed to find a number of other species of damselflies including three species of dancer: Vivid, Lavender and Sooty as well as two species of bluet: Northern and Arroyo.

Some of these damselflies are much easier to ID in the hand than they are in binoculars and David managed to skillfully net a couple to show people up close in the hand. Even more impressively a couple of the PAS Young Birders Club were quick enough to carefully grab a couple from the rocks with their bare hands!

As well as the damselflies we picked up a few nice new dragonflies at our second stop including a Pale-faced Clubskimmer and a couple of Red Rock Skimmers.

Serpent Ringtail – David Bell

Our last stop for the day was at Stonyvale Picnic Area a little further up Big Tujunga Canyon. Here we found two neat new odes for the day. Perhaps the hardest to find on the day simply because of its minute size: Desert Firetail, a truly tiny but beautiful little ode (more here) and the rather neat Gray Sanddraggon (photographed below).

In the end we tallied an impressive twenty three species of dragonfly and damselfly on the day somehow missing perhaps one of the regions commonest: Variable Meadowhawk. You can see the PDF list put together by Kimball here: ODONATA FIELD TRIP DB edits. I think everyone had a great time, enjoyed seeing some beautiful insects and learned a great deal about our local odonata. Thanks to Kimball Garrett and David Bell for their expert guidance. If you want to learn more about dragonflies then Odonata Central is a good place to start (link here). David’s company put together their recently released  iPhone App which you can download for free!

Gray Sanddragon – David Bell