Halloween Pennant

It is hard to find anything more appropriate for the last week in October then the Halloween pennant. Pennants are colorful members of the skipper family. They are called pennants because they like to perch horizontally from a stick, plant or blade of grass. This makes them look like a flag or pennant. The Halloween pennant is mostly yellow and brown when they emerge. Males turn to this orange color as they mature which is how they became named the Halloween pennant.

Halloween Pennant

Tamarac, a "Near Pristine" Refuge

In the last weekend in July, I headed northwest up to the Tamarac NWR. Established in 1938 Tamarac sits at the divergence of 3 biomes, coniferous forests, deciduous forest, and prairie grasslands. This provides a great diversity of habitat on the 42,724 acre refuge. These diverse habitats are a home to many different species of bird, mammal, reptile, amphibian and insect.

The refuge was originally set up to protect breeding habitat for migrating waterfowl. In the fall thousands of migrating waterfowl, often including more then 15,000 ring-necked ducks, stop over on the twenty-one lakes that are found on the refuge. Most of the lakes contain abundant food, such as wild rice beds, that the waterfowl take advantage of before they continue the trip south.
Some waterfowl remain on the refuge all summer long. Birds such as red-necked grebes, hooded mergansers, wood ducks and common loons will often nest and raise their young on the protected waters of the refuge.
With twenty-one lakes, three rivers and many other wetlands including marshes, bogs, swamps and ponds their is plenty of habitat for dragonflies. The most common that I spotted on my trip were Canada darner, blue dasher, and Halloween pennant, pictured above. There was also plenty of fields full of wild flowers with butterflies fluttering between the colorful blossoms.

The visitors center is located in the center area of the refuge over looking a beautiful wetlands. Refuge offices are also located in the building. From here they manage various aspects of the refuge including the management of wildlife such as trumpeter swans and bald eagles, water management, prescribed burnings and plantings, monitoring and controlling invasive species, and breeding bird and other surveys. All of this work has payed off to keep Tamarac in a "near pristine" state.

Halloween Pennant

Macro - Halloween Pennant Purgatory

The genus Celithemus is a part of the Libellulidae, or skimmer, family. There common name is pennant which comes from the way in which they typically perch. As you can see in these photos, pennants usually perch horizontally at the top of a stick or blade of grass. The wings are held at an angle with the forewings higher then the hindwings which gives them the appearance of a flag or a pennant.

We see two types of pennants here in Minnesota the calico pennant and the Halloween pennant, which is featured here. Even though Halloween pennants seem to be less effected by cold, they are often found out flying in weather that other dragons avoid, they are not usually found here in Minnesota in October. They received the name Halloween pennant because of the color of the males, which are orange with black-brown spots. These pics are of females, which is why they are yellow with black-brown spots. I photographed these dragons at Purgatory Creek during the summer.

Lac Qui Parle State Park

This summer I did some exploring to try and help out the Minnesota Odonata Survey Project. The mission of the MOSP is to survey the odonates, dragonflies and damselflies, in the state of Minnesota. Minnesota has been behind when it comes to surveying odonates especially in the more rural areas of the state.

One area that I found had not been very well surveyed was Lac Qui Parle County which is located in western Minnesota along the South Dakota border. There were only a few species recorded in this county, as well as several others around it, so I decided to take a day and explore Lac Qui Parle State Park.

It was a long drive. It took me over 6 hours to get to the park, although I did stop in one of the neighboring counties to collect a few specimens on my way. I spent a couple of hours in the park and I came away with about a dozen new county records. One of the not so common dragonflies that I found was this Halloween pennant.

There were other things besides dragonflies for me to photograph. The name Lac Qui Parle is a French translation of the name which the Dakota Sioux gave to the lake, Mde Iyedan. The English translation is " the Lake that Talks". It was named this because of the large numbers of waterfowl, especially Canada geese, that use the lake for staging during migration. Besides the migrating geese and ducks there is also a colony of white pelicans that nest on an one acre island in the park.
Lac Qui Parle was also the sight of a Christian Mission. The mission was built in 1835 and was adjacent to a trading post owned by Joseph Renville, a half French and half Dakota fur trader and explorer. The missionaries worked to teach the Dakota Christianity and western ways. They also worked to learn the Dakota language and develop a Dakota alphabet. However when Renville died in 1846 things went down hill and the mission was abandon in 1854. The building above is a replica of the original chapel that was built back in 1940s. It is registered under the National Register of Historic Places as well as with the American Presbyterian Historical Society.

Halloween Pennant

Most dragonflies that have color on their wings are a part of the skimmer family. Their are quite a few different type of skimmers but the ones that are the most colorful, at least near where I live, are the pennants.

Pennants get their name because of the perpendicular way that they often perch at the top of a lone stick, weed stalk, or blade of grass. When perched this way they some what resemble a pennant or flag. We have two types of pennants in Minnesota, the calico pennant, which is red or yellow, and the Halloween pennant pictured above. This is either a female or young male because it is yellow in color. Mature males, and some females, are mostly orange and black in color which is why they got the name Halloween pennant.

Halloween Pennant

Fort Snelling Dragonflies

This summer I had a lot of opportunity to go out and photograph nature. As a result I have been able to post every single day for over four months, the last day that I did not make a post was June 4th. Before I began my blog I used to read other blogs, some about nature and others about different subjects such as politics, and one thing that kept bringing me back to certain sites was the fact that they updated every day, or at least on a very regular basis. As I began blogging, and figuring out what I was doing, I made a goal to try and get to the point where I could post every day so that my readers would always have something new to read and look at each day. I have succeeded over most of the summer and I hope to continue through the fall and even through winter. Winter is a hard time to get nature pics in Minnesota but there will be some opportunities and I have put away some photos that I did not post, so that I will have some fun stuff to share during the winter also.
I still also have quite a back log of posts that will probably last me through most of the rest of 2008. Like these dragonfly pics that I took back in July at Fort Snelling State Park.
The blue dasher hunts by making short flights, from a favorite perch, in serch of prey. Both the male, pictured above and the female, which is black and yellow striped, will defend a favorite perch from invading dragons.
I was pretty excited to get a photo of the photo of the dragon above. I have photographed several male eastern pondhawks before but this was the first female that I ever captured. The males are primarily green also but most of their thorax and abdomen is covered in in a slate blue pruinose.
There were also some more Halloween pennants around. Unlike the ones that I found at Purgatory Creek these where the orange color which most likely mean males.
When I saw this pennant through my lens finder the first thought that came to my mind was that it was laying eggs. That idea quickly dissappeared though because it was up in the air, it is probably a male, and eggs are laid from the end of the abdomen. The tiny dots that you can see in the photo are actually water mites. Water mite larva often attach to dragon fly larva and feed on its bodily fluid. The Mites, realatives of the wood tick, continue feeding on the dragonfly as it transforms into an adult. Eventually the water mite larva will drop off of the dragonfly and molt into its nymph form. As long as there are not too many mites the dragonfly can live as a host to these tiny parasites.

Halloween Pennants Invade Purgatory

The best way to start October is with a load of Halloween pennants that I photographed at Purgatory Creek.

I was quite excited when I found them because they were different then the one that I photographed earlier in the year at the Bass Ponds or the ones that I photographed last summer at Fort Snelling State Park.

The ones that I had photographed earlier were all the orange variety with black/brown spots. As you can see these were the yellow and brown variety.
Male Halloween pennants are always orange and brown. Females can be either orange and brown or yellow and brown like these in the pictures.
You can see, in all of these shots, the dragons perched horizontally at the top of vegetation. This is how the pennants got their name, because they resemble a pennant blowing in the wind.

Fall Begins with Halloween Pennants

Yesterday was the fall equinox. An equinox is a day when the sun is directly over the equator. This phenomena provides us with a day that has equal amounts of light and darkness, 12 hours of each. There are two equinox each year the spring equinox, which is around March 20th, and the fall equinox, which falls around September 22. The fall equinox is the herald of less daylight, the days continue to get shorter until the winter solstice which occurs around December 21st, and it is also the official end of summer.
So now that we are officially in fall I think that it is quite symbolic to post these pics of Halloween pennants that I took back in July at the Bass Ponds.
Halloween pennants have a very large range. They can be found from Southern Canada all the way down to the Florida Everglades. Males are orange, like the ones pictured in this post, while females are often more yellow in color.
Halloween pennants can be seen flying into about the middle of September, although I have not see any around here since the beginning of August, they are often active on colder days and when it rains.

Colorful Dragons at the Bass Ponds

There are many people around the world who enjoy birdwatching. They find birds fascinating and usually use words like colorful and beautiful when asked to describe what they enjoy about birds. Many people also enjoy butterflies and use the same words to describe them, but it is rare that you hear dragonflies described in these terms.
The truth is that there are dragons that can rival many butterflies for their color and beauty. I found two different examples of extremely colorful dragons when I visited the Bass Ponds Back in June.
The first three photos are examples of the Halloween pennant. Pennants are a type of dragonfly that tend to hang vertically of off the top of a stick, reed, or weed with their wings angled, so that they resemble a pennant on the top of a stick. The Halloween pennant is named such because of its autumn color scheme and it is the most common pennant in North America.
Unlike many other types of dragons, Halloween pennants do not seem to mind the weather so much. They can often be seen flying on windy days, during cooler temps or even during light rain or drizzle, when other dragons are under cover.
This next dragon looks similar but it is actually a very different type. The eastern amberwing has similar color as the Halloween pennant but it is easy to tell the difference, since the amberwing does not perch like a pennant.
The eastern amberwing is also smaller in size, then the Halloween pennant and usually much more wary. Usually they tend to only perch over water, for safety, but I got lucky to find this one perched on a bloom. I was also lucky that it stayed there while I took a few shots.