First meadowhawk

After a naturalist starts being able to answer the "what is it?" questions about the local flora and fauna, there are two directions the acolyte can go in. The first is to learn everything there is to know about behavior and then watch and record it in the field. The second option is to put together a phenology, a documentary account of the ebb and flow of nature's year. When do the pussy willows begin blooming? When do the fritillaries begin to appear? And, in this case, when do the meadowhawks make themselves known? Based on last year's fairly extensive monitoring, coupled with my tentative records from 2012, I hadn't expected to see members of this often difficult-to-ID-to-species group of odonates so soon, but in the cattails at the Henne marsh, there, surprisingly, was a bright green sprite that was clearly in the genus Sympetrum. Without the bug in hand, I can't say much more about the species, but clearly, its appearance at the beginning of summer means that my notions about the meadowhawks as a marker of impending autumn are wrong. Live and learn, about phenology and behavior—they're never mutually exclusive—that's the naturalist's real stock-in-trade.