Ontario: Stoney Lake Revisited

I was met, on our return from Asia in April 2013, with a particularly nasty surprise - an attack of severe gastric pain (and more) that dragged on for weeks while the doctors tried to figure out what was wrong with me and I grew increasingly terrified at what they might, eventually, tell me. It was actually a relief when it was finally diagnosed as an infestation of hookworms - unpleasant, but as easy to cure as deworming a puppy (in fact, the procedure is pretty much the same). I appear to have picked up the little buggers on my last trip into the Sarawak highlands. 

Anyway, my unwanted passengers pretty much kept me hors de combat for a few months, and even by early summer, when I could get out at all other than to be probed and prodded by various doctors, I was still pretty shaky. An invitation from our friend Vanessa Kwan to spend the July 5th weekend at her brother Nelson's cottage on Stoney Lake was a perfect opportunity - all I had to do was stumble out the door, lean on my monopod, and take all the pictures of lakeside dragonflies I liked. The quiet little backwater where Nelson's cottage sits was loaded (as I had found the year before) to the teeth with them, and our revisit cheered me up no end.

 

Even without the dragonflies, of course, the lakeside had a great deal more to recommend it than the inner workings of a gastric disease clinic - including blooming Fragrant Water-Lilies (Nymphaea odorata) and Yellow Pond-Lilies (Nuphar variegata).

The nearshore waters of our little corner of the lake were dotted with water lilies and floating mats of other plants, and lined with clumps of moss - in other words, a haven for dragonflies and damselflies, with lots of places for both insect and photographer to sit and consider the landscape.  Numbers of Blue Dashers (Pachydiplax longipennis) took advantage of this nearly-ideal situation.

For someone who spends a lot of time in Southeast Asia these days, it is alweays surprising to see the close parallels between the dragonfly faunas of a Malaysian pond and an Ontario  lake.  The Blue Dasher is almost a ringer for an equally common Asian dragonfly,  Brachydiplax chalybea.  Singaporeans even call their species the Blue Dasher - most confusing!  The two are not (as far as I know) even each other's closest relatives.

This one has chosen to sit on the sporophytes, or fertile organs, of a patch of sphagnum moss.

Like many other dragonflies, Blue Dashers often adopt the obelisk pose, with abdomen lifted skywards.  As I have discussed elsewhere, this is a bit of dragonfly behaviour that we have yet to fully understand - though this one may just be soaking up sunshine.

The lily pads on the lake were popular perching sites for a smaller dragonfly, the Dot-tailed Whiteface (Leucorrhinia intacta).  I hope the reasons for its English name are self-evident from this photograph.

Lily pads were not only good resting spots for Dot-tailed Whitefaces - they made useful boudoirs as well.  For those unfamiliar with the rather weird mating practices of dragonflies, the male is the one clutching the female just behind the head with the claspers at the end of his abdomen.  In  the lower two photographs the female has completed the "wheel" by reaching forward with the tip of her abdomen to collect a sperm packet that the male has previously transferred to his secondary sexual appendage.

The Dot-tailed's cousin the Frosted Whiteface (Leucorrhinia frigida) was also in the vicinity - note the "frosting" of white pruinescence on the abdomen, and the lack of the Dot-tailed's tell-tale dot. 

This male Eastern Pondhawk (Erythemis simplicicollis) has also chosen to rest on a lily pad.  He is a handsome creature, his green face a high highlight against the pale blue pruinescence (a dustlike coating) that covers most of his body.

Personally, though, I find the female, which lacks the pruinescence, even more striking.  Her green really glows on the sun, even if she does tend to blend in with the surrounding moss.

The lake edge was also popular with damselflies - a bit harder to spot as they nestled among clumps of horsetail, but easy to watch all the same.  This is one of the American bluets of the genus Enallagma - perhaps a Boreal Bluet (Enallagma boreale) but the only way to be sure is to capture the animal and examine its gentalia with a hand lens.  I wasn't prepared to disturb it to that extent, so "Boreal-type Bluet" is as close as I can get.

Bluets belong to the widespread family Coenagrionidae.  This Swamp Spreadwing (Lestes vigilax) belongs to another damselfly family, the Lestidae - a group that some have suggested is even closer to dragonflies than to damselflies.  This is another species that is difficult to identify wihthout a hand lens, but I managed to get an identifiable photo of one of these on my visit the previous year so I am reasonably certain that I have named this one correctly.  Spreadwings take their name from the typically open-winged posture that this one is demonstrating nicely.

Scanning the lake with binoculars frequently turned up Common Green Darners (Anax junius) patrolling out on the water.  Getting a photo of one was another matter entirely, as in common with other darners they rarely perch.  This one stopped briefly on the canopy of Nelson's boat, and I managed a so-so snap before it flew off again.  Like other members of its family, the Aeshnidae, it perches by hanging vertically rather than sitting crosswise, as the dragonflies we have seen so far, all members of the large family Libellulidae, prefer to do.

The type genus of the family Libellulidae is Libellula, whose members are called skimmers in North America and chasers in Europe. Three very different but equally striking species patrolled the lake edges and grassy patches around the cottage. This one, the darkest of the lot but handsome all the same, is the Slaty Skimmer (Libellula incesta). 

The most spectacular of the lot -and surely one of the most easily identifiable of dragonflies - is the Twelve-spotted Skimmer (Libellula pulchella). 

The Widow Skimmer (Libellula luctuosa) is named for its patches of somber black, but it is really a rather garish insect. Females and young males, like this one, are very different from the adult male, which lacks their bright golden yellows. 

The adult male Widow Skimmer, like the Twelve-spot, is (to quote James MacNeil Whistler's real name for his portrait of his mother) an arrangement in black and white. 

The Cherry-faced Meadowhawk (Sympetrum internum) is another species that (without capture) is extremely difficult to tell from some of its close relatives. I am identifying this female as much on range as on appearance. True to its name, this little dragon was more likely to turn up at the edge of a field than along the margin of the lake. 

Though I did spend most of my time resting at the cottage, I did feel up to a short drive to a quite different odonate habitat I had found on my last trip: a rocky stream bed on the north side of the lake, west of the entrance to Petroglyphs Provincial Park. 

Here were a number of Common Whitetails (Plathemis lydia). These adult males are sunning themselves on the streamside rocks, but they are not, in particular, stream-haunting insects. 

Odonate-watchers head for places like this in the hope of turning up one of the clubtails (Gomphidae). I found this one, a Dusky Clubtail (Gomphus spicatus), but it didn't hang around long. 

Streams are also good spots for a few specialized damselflies. On my visit the rocks were covered with Powdered Dancers (Argia moesta), named for their bounding flight and for the coating of powdery pruinescence on the adult males. 

Not as common, but certainly more spectacular, were Ebony Jewelwings (Calopteryx maculata), damselflies that always strike me as too tropical-looking for Ontario. This one, with its all-black wings, is a male. 

The female can be spotted (without checking out her genitalia) by her brilliant white pterostigmas (the white dots near the wing tips, in case you are averse to terminology). 

Just to show you that I am not yet entirely odonate-obsessed, I will end with a butterfly: a Pearl Crescent (Phycoides tharos).