Hard Odes

I'll be curious to see how I compare the difficulty of identifying Odes with some of the harder species of birds in a few years after more experience.  I'm still at the lug-around-a-Peterson-in-spring-migration phase of odes.  My family's gone camping so I spent most of the day looking for dragonflies.

The two red Trameas are really really similar.  Earlier in the year I caught a Red Saddlebags.  My impression in the past has been that Carolina gets more likely later in the season and I'd been ignoring them for a few weeks.  It seems like they've gotten more common again.

 

 ID points that (I think) are supportive of Carolina are the dark frons (nose), quite small clear patch at the base of the hindwing, and (again I think), how far down the black at the end of the abdomen reaches.  It took a lot of effort to eventually ambush one.

 This is my best pic so far of Comet Darner.  They don't land.  It was hard to get even this pic.  They're not common on this side of the state.

 I think the above pic is good enough for ID purposes, they were really orange at close range.  Common Green Darner females (below) could maybe look similar, but they're brown, not orange

I spent about 3 hours trying to stalk or ambush the Comet and this next creature.

This Golden-winged Skimmer flew just as I started my net swing.  It's probably the best picture of one ever taken in the state of Michigan.

Most meadowhawks are impossible to identify when young.  Variegated is an exception to the rule.

I mostly ignore the damselflies unless they're a tandem pair.  This Amber-winged Spreadwing was large enough to catch my eye though, a lifer for me.

Finally a clubtail that I cannot identify.  It's a teneral (recently emerged) female that's 55mm in length.  Clubtails generally have 4 stripes on the thorax.  On this one they're broad and merge into 2.  It does not (to my interpretation) have a T5 stripe at the very end of the thorax which Ashy Clubtail is supposed to have but otherwise is probably closest to it.

 There's a lot of yellow along the sides of the abdomen, more than any other clubtail I've found.

 The broad blurry bit of yellow across S9 seems fairly unique.  It doesn't have much of a club. 

So ... we'll see what they say when I send it in to U of M at the end of the season.