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Showing posts for 'dragonflies'. Clear search
The last ode winging it
November 07, 2020 - Any dragonflies still on the wing last week were, most likely, done in by the killer frost that arrived on Halloween mor...
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A salty dragon
August 10, 2020 - Following my latest twice-yearly visit with my cardiologist—nothing untoward to report, praise the Lord—I rewarded good...
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Enter the dragon... hunter
August 01, 2020 - In any family, parents don't want to play favorites... but sometimes, despite the best parental efforts, the phrase, "Mo...
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Halloween in July
July 22, 2020 - The continuing intense heat and humidity, to say nothing of the persistent deer flies, have made walking something less...
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Debut great blue
June 29, 2020 - The overall color pattern of this dragonfly—the two-toned abdomen and the black marks on the wing tips—usually is a sign...
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Origin story
June 08, 2020 - When I was a kid, my mom, who was no real fan of the natural world, told me that dragonflies, which she called "darning...
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Exquisite mystery
June 01, 2020 - When I started this endeavor seven years ago—merciful heavens, time has flown!—it was envisioned as a way to highlight s...
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Second ode
May 19, 2020 - In past years, one of my favorite and most often repeated post was on the first dragonfly that I spotted for the year, a...
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Not really a widow
July 29, 2019 - When you spot your first Widow Skimmer dragonfly, it's easy to understand why birders and butterfly aficionados get hook...
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First fawn
July 01, 2019 - This was a definite surprise. It was a warm, sunny morning—the fact that it wasn't raining was a surprise in and of itse...
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Not at home
June 16, 2019 - I spend a lot of time watching animal behavior, and this means, of course, that I have seen my share of matings. I guess...
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Basket of tails
June 13, 2019 - I know what some of you—the unlikely faithful who have been visiting this blog all along (a blessing for me, to be sure)...
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Waiting for white
June 11, 2019 - In the past few days, the air has been swarming with Common Whitetail dragonflies... only, they don't yet have white tai...
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Welcome arrival
May 21, 2019 - Everything has been insanely slow this year, and while this is, no doubt, attributable to the insanely slow arrival of g...
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True survivors
October 29, 2018 - Since the first bona fide dragonflies were filling the skies some 300 million years ago, it's definitely fair to say tha...
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Mottling saved
October 04, 2018 - I'm not sure the dragonflies are quite on the move yet—well, the ones that will be traveling southeast soon enough—but t...
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Left behinds
September 23, 2018 - One of the real joys of my year is the fact that the head of the University of Rhode Island's Environmental Education at...
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Dragonhunter finale?
September 17, 2018 - One of the "inconvenient truths" I discovered during my long recovery from heart surgery is that all of those daily walk...
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Enter the dragon... hunter
July 30, 2018 - I am, it almost goes without saying, pretty close to obsessed with odonates, and while many more-or-less retired guys my...
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A different fawn
July 23, 2018 - With the steady heat and humidity seemingly here for the duration—and there are deluded souls who believe that climate c...
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Back in the saddle... bags
July 21, 2018 - I thought I was heading to a guided walk at Hopkinton's Blue Pond to be led by Doug McGrady, an absolutely incredible bo...
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Handsome widower
July 10, 2018 - There's been something of a dearth of odonates this month and last, and their relative absence has both mystified and un...
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Painted perfection
June 13, 2018 - I was afraid that this was going to be a very mediocre dragonfly season, but, in daily increasing numbers, the odonates...
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Spike driver
June 05, 2018 - I don't want to sound too one-note, but I'm finding that, all too often, I'm invoking the "spring-that-wasn't" as an exp...
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Posterior perch
June 02, 2018 - Last night, I almost postponed the National Trails Day walk I was scheduled to lead in this morning—the Weather Channel...
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Recovery reward
May 04, 2018 - When I finished hauling all of the trash—praise be, more recyclables than garbage—to the various proper places at the du...
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Meadowhawk redux
October 03, 2017 - For reasons I can't begin to fathom, from global warming to the election of Donald Trump, it has been a strangely off ye...
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First fawn
August 17, 2017 - When you live a long time in the same place and you're committed to record-keeping, you can, in fairly short order, begi...
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Uber-predator
August 09, 2017 - Several hundred million years ago, giant dragonflies, with wingspans exceeding two feet, patrolled the steamy and oxygen...
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Early Halloween
August 03, 2017 - When my granddaughter Stasia came out of one of the dollar stores recently, she was aghast at what she'd seen. "Hallowee...
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Landscape ode
July 02, 2017 - Years of tracking dragonflies have taught me, within fairly broad limits, when to expect certain signature species to sh...
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Fiddling about
June 19, 2017 - This afternoon found me in the car on the way to a doctor's appointment near New Haven, and after that ordeal, more ment...
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Old young friends
June 14, 2017 - Everything continues to be late this June, and the absence of some of the signature species of late spring has begun to...
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Spike driver
June 04, 2017 - By this time in past years, the June air has been thrumming with dragonflies of all sorts and every walk would have yiel...
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A salute to corporals
May 20, 2017 - Overnight, the heat departed, and in its wake, cooler heads, well, weather, began to prevail. I spent the morning photog...
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Aquatic renewal
October 29, 2016 - It's hard to believe that only a couple of weeks ago, this stream was almost bone dry and silent, but we've had a close-...
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The wanderer
October 04, 2016 - I had to talk myself into going to the beach this afternoon, and it was a difficult argument, since I'd already gone for...
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Sexual gymnastics
August 12, 2016 - Using the proverbial "birds and the bees" to introduce the world of sex to your kids has its perils. There's the fact th...
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Unknowingly deceased
August 06, 2016 - This has been a fine year for Common Whitetail dragonflies, and I've seen so many of the handsome and striking odes that...
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Old friend
July 17, 2016 - Some days—and nights—are filled with new discoveries; others are simply a chronicle of staying in touch with old friends...
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Painted meadow
June 30, 2016 - While Painted Skimmer dragonflies are supposed to be on the wing in late May, I rarely see them around here until the en...
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Ol' Blue Eyes
June 08, 2016 - If your knee-jerk reaction to yet another dragonfly image is, well, Dear God in Heaven, can't the naturalist shoot anyth...
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Aerial
June 05, 2016 - Post-Trails-Day, I celebrated what I think was a success with—what else?—a hike. My destination was a long-time favorite...
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Here come the lancets
June 02, 2016 - Finally, finally, finally, the air is starting to be filled with the glints of sunlight on wings—a sight that indicates...
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The first common dragonfly
May 31, 2016 - I was beginning to wonder if something was wrong with our odonate population. To be sure, May was often chilly, many tim...
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Into the [cedar] woods
May 11, 2016 - The Avalonia Land Conservancy, a group I do a lot of volunteering for, brought me along for an assessment trip through a...
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Last meadowhawk?
December 12, 2015 - When the temperature this afternoon soared into the 60s—a new high, I'm pretty sure—I knew that I had a mission: to visi...
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Odonate high tea
October 15, 2015 - The afternoons have been deliciously warm, and though I'm still not at my best, healthwise—both physical and emotional—I...
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Going south
September 26, 2015 - It wasn't exactly the best of beach days, but I needed to get out of the house and explore someplace new, so, since the...
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Pack your (saddle) bags
September 17, 2015 - I spent a good part of the day in New Haven being poked and probed, x-rayed and phlebotomized, by my medical team, all o...
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The start of the swarm
August 26, 2015 - As I walked past the doomed field across the street, I noticed, in what is still left of the meadow towards the still-sh...
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Addled Dragonhunter
August 23, 2015 - I headed out on my late afternoon, diminished-risk-of-sunburn walk to the millpond where, I knew from past experience, I...
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Finally, spinosus
August 07, 2015 - This has been a funny year for dragonflies, and, while I have no real scientific way of proving this, I think my sightin...
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Odonate orgy
July 28, 2015 - The Powdered Dancer damselflies, a large and unusually robust species with very white thoraxes, have been active in the...
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Discovering calico
July 06, 2015 - In my several years as an ardent but definitely amateur odonatologist, I've managed to learn a number of the more common...
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Halloween in July
July 02, 2015 - I was on a mission today. First on the list was a trip to the dump to drop off the recyclables and the true trash, which...
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Don't try this at home
June 14, 2015 - A host of newly minted dragonflies have been emerging from the water over the past week, and they all seem to have one t...
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Dot-tailed redux
June 12, 2015 - Today was dump day, and that usually means a reward: a trek up Lantern Hill, the trailhead of which is just down the hil...
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On the trail
June 06, 2015 - Most of my daily walks are done solo. It's not that I'm anti-social, it's just a matter of scheduling. Essentially, I hi...
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Almost adult
June 03, 2015 - Blue Dasher dragonflies are common as dirt around here, and they just might be our most abundant species, with Pondhawks...
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Babies at the nursery
May 23, 2015 - I had to head to the supermarket this afternoon, but before I made it over there, I stopped at the Henne refuge for a qu...
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The baskettails
May 19, 2015 - The baskettails, a group of dragonflies that are nestled within the Emerald clan, are among the first odonates to take t...
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Ode to spring
May 07, 2015 - We spent much of the morning and early afternoon at a funeral for a wonderful friend of my mom's—a dear woman we grew up...
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Rumors of my demise...
November 23, 2014 - It was ridiculously warm this afternoon—low 60s—and after I'd trekked uphill at Babcock Ridge and again spotted very, ve...
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Surprise swarm
October 13, 2014 - The temperature rose almost into the 70s today, and on my walk, it was back to tee-shirt weather. It was also back to dr...
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All gussied up
October 09, 2014 - After way too long an absence—almost two months—I hauled myself back to my natural history "home-away-from-home": the Th...
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Out of the shadows
October 07, 2014 - We're in the waning days of the odonate season, but there are still at least a few species accompanying me on my daily t...
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The swarmers
September 18, 2014 - Yesterday, I wrote about the giant cloud of tiny insects that rose en masse out of the no-longer-hayed field across the...
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The swarm
September 16, 2014 - It was a warm, late-summer day, and, alas, another indoor-work day, mostly on writing, so my walking had to be curtailed...
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Third eye
September 04, 2014 - For the past few years, I've had the chance to spend a good part of one late-summer day at the University of Rhode Islan...
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Odonates... it's what's for dinner
August 18, 2014 - The first Dragonhunter—the uber-predator of odonates—arrived more than two weeks ago, but ever since I spotted the drago...
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