DESTINATION: DIRTY SHAME!!

Saloon, that is!! And the trip was aborted!

Each fall, along with some good Helena friends, we head out for a fun weekend at some special place in Montana where at least some of the group have not visited previously. This year, we selected the Troy/Yaak countryside in the very NW corner of Montana. While there are numerous special attractions in this distant corner of the state, the Dirty Shame Saloon in Yaak was one of primary targets this year. I should mention here that in an earlier blog, I reported a visit to Alzada in the very SE corner of the state. Googlemaps calculates the highway driving distance from Alzada to Yaak at about 784 miles! Montana IS a large state!

After a rather long drive, partly lengthened when our GPS unit "Jane" tried to lead us astray, we neared one of our stopping points, the Ross Creek Cedar Grove near Bull Lake. This unique site harbors some huge Western red cedar trees up to eight feet in diameter and lets one imagine that they are actually someplace on the west coast of Washington or Oregon. It is a must stop for anyone venturing through that part of Montana. After a leisurely walk among these giants, we headed a few miles north to our night's lodging, Swanson Lodge, just south of Troy. Then off to dinner. As we were entering a restaurant in Troy that evening, I decided to check my phone for messages. There were a half dozen voice messages that I decided I'd better check out. Most were from our son Matt. He urgently reported that there was a fire on McDonald Pass, just west of Helena, and very near the home of the good friends, Joan and Vern Schneider, who were enjoying the weekend with us. Residents and all animals in the area were under an evacuation warning. Joan is an equine aficionado and pastures several horses at their "ranchette".

Our decision as to what to do was quite easy - head back to Helena the next morning! In the meantime, Schneider's son Brett drove up to Helena from Billings, and along with our son Matt and other friends, the horses were evacuated and other cherished possessions taken from their home to safe places. We left early the next morning - Saturday - for the 5 hour trip home. As we came down on the east side of McDonald Pass, the fire area was easy to spot. But fortunately, the smoke indicated that the fire was not totally out of control, as there were no billowing cumulus clouds of smoke arising from the area. Law enforcement officials allowed us on the road into their home and the threat didn't look too bad. Strong winds that materialized that afternoon didn't push the fire too much farther east as was feared.So, no Dirty Shame Saloon this year, but maybe next? While our fun weekend was cut short, the story ends well with all safe and sounds at the Schneider residence. And the weather on this Sunday morning looks promising for helping to get the fire under control in the next few days!

Storybook Ending to Dragonfly Season

On Monday evening, I called Nate Kohler of Deer Lodge to see if I could entice him to accompany me on Tuesday for what would likely be my last full day of dragonfly chasing for the year. Out of town travel would keep me from doing much more of this great pastime during the final several weeks that these intriguing insects would still be flying in Montana. The location I chose to visit for this last junket was one of my favorites, a spring and pond complex west of Drummond. Over the previous several months, this place had provided me with some very good days of pursuing this new hobby of mine, and it would be a fitting site to spend the last good opportunity. Indeed, several days previously, I had captured a Canada Darner here, one of the species that had eluded me all summer. And the opportunity to net a Shadow Darner, another species that had escaped my net, was promising.

Nate was easy! There was no competition between his planned day of entering data into a computer and an opportunity to chase "Odes" - Dragonflies - again! For this, I owe his wife Patti an apology! But then Patti and my wife Kathy have come to know what to expect from us when we get that "look" in our eyes!!

As I approached the spring complex, Nate's pickup was already parked along the road side and he was swinging his net at our quarry. I quickly joined him. The weather was a bit cloudy at first but the clouds parted after several hours, and it turned out to be a great - albeit rather warm - September day. We spent most of the morning at this spring/pond complex and netted way more dragon and damselflies than one could expect. The dominant species was the Blue-eyed Darner, with its sky blue eyes. It is unusual to find this species in such abundance and so late in the season in Montana. Since we had encountered no unusual species in the morning, we ate lunch quickly, and Nate suggested we try a large oxbow lake of the Clark Fork River several miles to the west. This sounded good to me since I had never explored that area previously.

There were not as many dragonflies at this oxbow area but it was quit a nice setting. The best part of this side venture was that Nate captured a Lance-tipped Darner, a dragonfly species that he had never captured previously. But the Shadow Darner I had been seeking continued to elude us. It was now about 3pm, and quite warn, so we decided to head back to the spring/pond complex for one last attempt at a Shadow. This species is more often found in late afternoon and evening, so I was anticipating that my luck might change with one last shot at this elusive - for me - dragonfly.

Our luck did change, but not in a way that either of us had at all anticipated! We separated by a hundred yards or so and began our netting attempts again. After a short while, Nate called over that he had captured a Meadowhawk - Sympetrum genus - type dragonfly species that he was puzzled about. He described it and mostly in jest, I called over to him that maybe it was an Autumn Meadowhawk (Sympetrum vicinum), a species that to our knowledge had never been recorded in Montana previously. He walked over to me with it and we discussed various possibilities as to its identity. With our combined recollections of the characteristics of Autumn Meadowhawk, that ID certainly seemed to fit, but the closest to this location that it had ever been reported from previously was several hundred miles away in Idaho. Our field guides were back at the vehicles so Nate carefully collected this insect so we could check more closely after we headed back to them. We continued some netting for another half hour or so before the time dictated that I should be heading for home.

As we reached the vehicles, I spotted a small dragonfly sitting on a grass seed head by Nate's truck tail gate. With one quick swipe of the net, I captured it, and then extracted it to take a look. It was a female but the species was not readily apparent to me. I showed it to Nate and he immediately noted that it had a very unique scoop like "sub-genital plate", an appendage at the tail end of the abdomen. AUTUMN MEADOWHAWK he announced!! I ran to get my field guide and sure enough, that was it!! And now, the ID of the male he had caught previously came into clear view. We had captured both sexes of a species that had not previously been reported for Montana, and at a location where it would certainly not have been expected! So on probably last full day of dragonfly chasing for the year for me, with the last net swing of the day, I had captured a female of a new species for Montana. Any disappointment from not capturing the Shadow Darner I had been seeking quickly disappeared from my mind. How could I possibly beat this finale? It doesn't get any better!!

Fall in the Air!

In spite of recent temperatures near 90 for the past week or so, fall is in the air - color-wise and biologically. Hummingbirds are mostly south of Montana now and shorebird migration is past its peak. A visit to a local abandoned and flooded gravel pit yesterday added one more sign - large numbers of Variegated Meadowhawks! This dragonfly species, a migrant from farther south, was the first to show up in the Helena Valley this spring. And now the "fruits" of its early arrival are showing themselves in large numbers. I'm note sure how long they will remain here before they begin their long journey south, but hopefully my first full season of following these intriguing insects will provide that answer for me. Only a few dragonfly species in Montana are migratory, and one of the others - Common Green Darner - was also present in numbers at the gravel pit. Here is one that just emerged from its aquatic nymph stage. Note that the wings are not yet fully engorged and extended with body fluids. The other species that was very abundant at the gravel pit was the band-winged Meadowhawk. Many of these were together in a tandem mating formation. These images are male and female. Speaking of fall, on a visit to Virginia last week, I had a few hours to look for dragonflies and among others, found a Halloween Pennant. Wing colors on this species suggest that pumpkin time is not too far away!