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!!
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