Eco-Diary: Day 6

Day 6, September 5, 2012: I was away for the weekend so I didn’t get on the trail again until today. I didn’t have a camera with me, but since it had already been several days since my first observation, I decided to sit down and do things the old-fashioned way and put pen to paper.

I spent about 30 minutes observing. It was a beautiful, hot sunny day. Watching dragonflies flit along a creek on a sunny, late-summer day has got to be one of the most valuable uses of my time in the last two weeks. It’s hard to imagine a simpler pleasure.

In fact, what I was watching weren’t dragonflies but rather damselflies. I’d always wondered what the difference was. Now I know. Among other differences (from Odes for Beginners):

• Damselflies are weaker fliers and less active than dragonflies. They usually fly low over the water. They generally perch, wait for prey to fly by. Dragonflies, on the other hand, are powerful and active fliers, often seen flying out in the open. 
• At rest, damselflies hold their wings together along or tilted just above the abdomen. The forewing and hindwing are the same size. Dragonflies hold their wings horizontally — when perched they look like an airplane. 
• Damselflies have spherical eyes that protrude from the sides of their head. Dragonflies have close-set eyes that almost meet in the centre of their head. 

I observed three species of damselfly, but I only managed to identify one of them when I got home — the ebony jewelwing (Calopteryx maculata):

It’s black wings and iridescent green body make it pretty unmistakable — it looks like a shadow flying over the water. I think of them as the witchy, independent thinkers of the Odonata — the ebony jewelwing could just as easily have been named the Salem darkwing.

The scientist in me finds it incredibly frustrating to not be able to identify something, but after combing through probably hundreds of species photos, I’m unable to even guess at what the second species might be.

It had very obvious white spots on the tips of its dark wings — suggesting it might be a female C. maculata, but the red spot on the top of its head doesn’t match any species photos I’ve seen. Stay tuned for updates — I will find an answer! (Update: I'm pretty sure this was a female C. maculata after all.)

The third species I saw didn't come close enough for me to get a good look at it. From a distance it was whitish-blue with transluscent wings. It's pretty amazing just how many species of damselfly there are that match this description.

I did, however, get to watch a pair of these damsels in the early stages of mating:

What I observed was the male clasping the female behind her head in the in preparation for mating. They can spend several minutes in tandem like this before forming the full "mating wheel", which they didn't stick around long enough for me to see (I photographed the pair below — probably some kind of bluet — a year ago).

I also noticed this plant with arrow-shaped leaves growing beneath the cattails:

According to Golden Press’ Pond Life (Golden Press produced some fabulous nature guides for beginners; I’m always keeping an eye out for them at used bookstores), it's either Sagittaria latifolia (known as common arrowhead or wapato):

or Peltandra virginica (known as arrow arum or pickerel weed):

 

I’ll have to have a closer look.

Eco-Diary: Day 1

Week 2 of the B.Ed. program at Trent University and I’m in love with being a student again. University classes where the instructors actually engage students in discourse is a totally new thing for me — my experience as an undergrad at the University of Waterloo was of anywhere from 100 to 400+ students jammed into a lecture hall. At that point, even if a prof actually likes teaching, there’s not much more they can do besides lecture. The smallest class I ever had at Waterloo (and not until I was in my fourth year) was 25-30 people. That’s about the size of my biggest classes here. So being able to actually discuss ideas in class with other students and the profs is exciting.

First assignment for my biology class: create a photographic ecology diary. Essentially, this is a longitudinal study of a particular natural feature, designed to sharpen our observational skills so that we can promote those same skills in our students. I’ve chosen to focus on the stream I cross on the bike path on my way to and from campus every day.

Here's what the creek looked like on Day 1, August 31, 2012:

I’d intended to choose something simpler and more specific, like the sky, or a particular tree, or the plants struggling for survival at the base of the telephone pole outside my apartment, or a foot of shoreline where I’d at least have a reasonable chance of cataloguing the majority of the macroscopic life, but this stream is just too nice a spot. I love the idea of taking time every day to just sit and observe nature at work — something that, despite working in conservation/environmental education for the last couple years, I’ve neglected just as much as most of my contemporaries.

Despite the fact that this is an aquatic habitat, the first thing I noticed here were the wildflowers, primarily raspberry (too late for berries, unfortunately),

jewelweed,

 

this plant that looks like like a mini-cross between a maple and red oak but is neither,

and this mystery flower. (Update: It's turtlehead (Chelone glabra).

Stay tuned for IDs and fun facts about these plants!