Small Town - or No Town - Montana

Ollie. Willard. Capitol. Albion. Hammond. Powderville. Vananda. Sumatra. These are all the names of places that appear on the official Montana Highway Map(2001-2002). Last weekend, on an excursion through the Southeastern part of Montana, I passed through all of these places - at least I think I did. Many of them have only a building or two. At least one - Capitol- seemed to have only a cemetery remaining. In others such as Albion, boarded up schoolhouses are all that remain.Changes in societal structure and improvements in roads - albeit gravel - and vehicles are likely contributors to the demise of these places. Maybe some of them never did amount to anything! It appears that the only reason some of them still exist is that presence of a US Post Office. Powderville is a great example of this.It will be interesting to see if these Post Offices survive the increases in efficiency that the US Postal Service is undertaking because of decreases in mail volume. But they do provide an important public service for the farm and ranch families that live in these very rural regions of the state. It looks like the lone residence in Sumatra recently got a new coat of paint. One of the "larger" towns I passed by - Ingomar - is really a Montana icon. And its seems to be struggling to survive. It is famous for a quaint old bar and restaurant named the Jersey Lilly. Years ago, when driving this road between Forsyth and Roundup, I used to stop at this establishment for a bowl of bean soup that Bill - the proprietor - used to always keep on the stove. The town has since lost some inhabitants and the Jersey Lilly is only open sporadically. But Ingomar now boasts of a B&B located in the old schoolhouse, the only place to find a room for the night in this 100-mile stretch of highway. It is named the Bunk and Biscuit.

Oh yes, the reason for my excursion thru this rural part of Montana was to scout the area for some new dragonfly and damsel species for my Montana list. The cloudy, cold, and windy weather was not very good for this purpose, but I did manage to find at least one new new species of these fascinating insects - an American Rubyspot. It is not difficult to see how it got its name!

Nemesis Bird - Finally!!

Since I began birding in earnest and recording all sightings about 1999 or so, there are several bird species that I have tried to find on numerous occasions without success. One of the last of these was the Spruce Grouse. While I had seen many of this species in years past, I didn't want to put them on my list of Montana birds ID'ed until I had seen one in my relatively recent years of keeping records. Most spruce grouse in Montana are found west of the Continental Divide. Many times, I have searched Glacier park to no avail. Then a friend from Deer Lodge located an area in the nearby mountains where this species could be found fairly easily. But each time I tried - NO LUCK!

Several days ago, I accompanied a friend on a hike to a high mountain meadow in the Pioneer Mountains of southwest Montana to look for and try to capture a male dragonfly of a species know only from this location in Montana. After a fairly steep initial portion of the trail, we came into a beautiful meadow area with a stream flowing quietly through it. Shortly after we entered this pristine meadow, a young grouse flushed from the tall grass. Then several more made their presence known. And there she was - a female spruce grouse with a brood of 4 young ones. Finally, I could check that one off on my list of nemesis birds of Montana!!We captured only females of the dragonfly species we were after, so Nate was a little distraught with the results of the hike, but for me, it was one of the better days I've experienced in a while.

And then yesterday was icing on the cake for the week! There was a report of a Band-tailed Pigeon in the small berg of Elliston, about 20 miles west of Helena. Only about a dozen or so historic records of this species have been recorded in the state, and it would be a new Montana species for me. Immediately upon my arrival at the residence where the bird had been frequenting, I spotted it sitting in the top of a conifer tree. It was quite skittish and flew to some other trees for a while. While waiting for it to return for a closer view, I was joined by Nate Kohler and a couple from Bozeman. After nearly 2 hours of waiting, the bird made its appearance again and posed on a metal post for some pretty good photo opps. A very successful week of birding, I' say!

Return to Gipsy Lake

When I visited this lovely mountain foothill lake last week to document dragonflies present in the area, I had intended to also visit some glacial potholes located nearby to the east. But my effort to locate the potholes was thwarted by heavy timber and steep slopes along the trail from which I had searched. Several days ago, I returned to the same area - this time with dragonfly expert Nate Kohler - to do more dragonfly sampling. We spent several hours in the morning on the main lake seeing what we could capture for ID purposes. It was quite breezy and the dragonflies seemed to be able to use the breeze to their advantage to avoid most of our capture attempts. Nate was more successful than I - as usual.

After eating some lunch, and armed with Google Earth photos I printed out the previous evening, we tried a new approach to reach the pothole area. From this new direction, it didn't take long to locate the first glacial pothole - and the effort was well worthwhile! From a dragonfly point of view, this type of habitat is just what we were looking for. There was a series of 6 of these potholes, all just a little different in terms of vegetation, depth and open water area - a few with very little of the latter. One of the other really neat aspects of this relatively small glaciated pothole area is that there were no trails into it and the steep hillsides and heavy timber likely keeps visitation very limited, possibly to just a few hunters in the fall. That is in spite of the the campground that is fairly close to them. Glaciers emanating from the nearby cirque in the Big Belt mountains deposited the glacial till that provides the basins for these potholes perhaps 8,000 or so years ago. It didn't take Nate long to get his collecting gear laid out and his net ready to see what he could catch. And as we had hoped, these potholes produced a number of dragonfly and damselfly species that we had not found on Gipsy Lake. The breeze that had hampered our capture efforts in the morning had now subsided so our efforts were much more successful. Captures from this day and my previous excursions resulted in the addition of about 15 new Meagher County county records for these insects. Of course, I should mention that prior to these visits, there were NO dragonfly records for this county. Of particular interest were the Lake and Sedge darners we found here plus a rather small dragonfly named a Hudsonian Whiteface, that is usually found in more northerly regions. The darners are likely the eastern most point of their distribution in this portion of Montana.

Before leaving the area to head home, I retrieved 2 cold bottles of beer I had hidden away in my cooler to celebrate the very successful day we had just completed! Could life be any better?

Gipsy Lake

As I have previously discussed, chasing dragonflies - and birds - gives me a great opportunity to visit places I've never been before or haven't been to in a long time. From 1971-72, Kathy and I lived in White Sulphur Springs, and I got to know the countryside pretty well in the short time we lived there. One of my favorite places was Gypsy Lake in the foothills of the Big Belt Mountains, at the base of a beautiful glacial cirque. Yesterday, I visited this lake for the first time in many years - and it is as gorgeous and serene as ever! There was a very good assortment of dragonflies and damselflies along the edges of the lake and even into the upland areas. The visit was a success from that angle - especially since there are presently no dragonfly records for Meagher County. So each of the 9 species I found were new county records. The eyes on this American emerald are really something to see. Since the pursuit of dragonflies has consumed almost all of my time this summer, bird photography has taken a back seat. The icing on the cake for this visit to Gypsy lake was a very cooperative spotted sandpiper. An indication of how much dragonflies have dominated my life in July is the fact that this is the only bird photo I have taken all month!

Ancillary Benefits - Viewing Montana History

There are some really great ancillary benefits to all of the bird and bug chasing I do. Viewing relics of Montana's past is one of them! In many areas of rural Montana, there are old homesteads, barns, mining relics, wooden grain elevators, vehicles and other living history "books" that give one a great view into how people lived many years ago. I don't always take the time to stop and photograph these great old reminders of the past, but I'm getting better at it. Here are a few of the images I've managed to record in the past several months.

Western Montana generally sports a bit of a different look from the relics of the eastern plains.
But in terms of quantity and quality, the old abandoned homesteads of the east are hard to beat because of their bucolic nature.
I sure hope these "living" pieces of history are still standing when our grandchildren are old enough to appreciate them!

A Celebratory Day!

On July 14 last year, I hiked into Morrell Lake and Falls northeast of Seeley Lake in an attempt to locate a Spruce Grouse to photograph. I mentioned this briefly in a previous blog. Before reaching the falls, I skirted a shallow pond that was teeming with dragonflies. After changing from my telephoto to macro lens, I waited patiently for some of these neat bugs to perch somewhere so that I could take some photos. Two different species were cooperative and I obtained reasonable photos of each. This event is what initiated my present obsession with these insects. The largest and showiest of those I got images of I later determined to be a Chalk-fronted Corporal. The other was more difficult to ID, but I concluded that it was a Crimson-ringed Whiteface. Friend and expert amateur dragonfly aficionado Nate Kohler confirmed this ID. And since he had not yet found this species himself, he was anxious to join me in another hike to this pond.

Yesterday, the near anniversary of my transformation into a dragonfly nut, we finally joined up to head back into this pond. Although the weather was not very promising, we took a chance that the sun would peek out long enough to stimulate some dragonfly activity. Immediately upon reaching the pond, we spotted some of what looked like the sought-after species. But after netting them, they turned out to be closely related, but not the target we wanted. Then the clouds moved in and the bugs moved up out of sight into the trees. After skirting the entire circumference of the lake with no success, we headed up the trail a ways to look at another nearby body of water nearby. Nothing looked promising there, so back to the first pond we ambled, discouraged but not ready to give up. Eventually, sun reappeared for a short while - and the dragonflies again came down to feed. And finally we were able to capture some of the sought after Crimson-ringed Whitefaces.Nate takes photos and keeps very detailed records of all his dragonfly outings and he also collects a few specimens for future reference. While the weatherman tried to put a damper on this outing, it was none the less quite successful. Nate was pleased with finding a new species for his records, and I was rewarded with a great learning experience provided by Montana's best amateur Odonatologist - dragonfly expert!!

Eight-spotted Skimmers

This morning, I headed north toward Cascade where a friend has some land along the Missouri River - with a very nice oxbow slough that looked promising for dragonflies. There are no dragonfly records for Cascade County so I scheduled this jaunt to see what species I could record for the county. As I had hoped, the slough supported a good number and variety of dragonflies - plus some damsels similar to what I had been finding in the Helena area. The most colorful of the Odes encountered today - or at least those I could capture or get close to - were the eight-spotted skimmers. And they were also quite abundant. While exploring the slough, I encountered a side channel that I wanted to cross. The site of an old beaver dam provided that opportunity - with water only up to mid calf on my hip boots. On my return to the side channel, I decided to cross several yards down channel from my initial crossing. In the first small step, the water was over my hip boots. And after the second, the water reached lower chest level. After letting out a WHOOP - and several other verbalizations I can't repeat here - I managed to make it back up onto the shore. My hip boots each now had about 2 gallons of water in them, and the status of my camera and binoculars was of great concern. I emptied the hip boots and then decided to shed most of my clothes to wring them out and set them in the sun for a while. An inspection of my camera and binos revealed that they took a quick dip with me but seemed to have suffered no ill effects. Of course, this was good news! Assessing my present situation - partially naked body and all - and hoping that no one was around to see my unclothed state of body, I nearly fell over with laughter! In the many decades I have spent wading rivers and lakes, this event left me wetter than I can ever recall. And it is a good thing that with age, I am now able to laugh at myself for the brazen self confidence of not testing the water's depth before taking the first step!

Was this skimmer image worth it? I think so! There is another very similar species - Twelve-spotted Skimmer - in Montana, but so far this year, I have only found one of them and that was in Helena. The naming of these species gives a pretty clear indication of what they are when you see them. Each wing on the Eight-spotted has two dark spots - for a total of eight. On the Twelve-spotted, each wing has 3 dark spots, but I don't have a photo of the latter for this year yet.

A new species of damselfly has just emerged in the past several days - Common or Northern Spreadwing. Note that the wings do not fold neatly over the back as in many other damsels - thus the name spreadwing. If you look closely below the thorax on this image, you will note what looks like small eggs. Actually, these are parasites that are sometimes found on Odes(Dragonflies and Damsels), but they apparently are not especially detrimental to the bugs unless the infestation is especially heavy. Remember to click on the image to enlarge it. When searching for Odes, you never quite know what you might run in to. My lifetime of fly fishing has brought me considerable familiarity with mayflies - insect Order Ephemeroptera. Now that birding/dragonfly watching/photography have mostly replaced my days of trout fishing on Montana's rivers and lakes, I don't pay quite as much attention to mayflies. But in the past week or so, I have had the opportunity to photograph several of these dainty and beautiful insects. Here is one I encountered today. I'm not quite sure what the species is, but it sure caught my eye!!