“Two-board Bridge” is located along a marked trail in the forest at an undisclosed location in Prince William County, Virginia USA. The small, wooden footbridge crosses a large seep. The plant with broad green leaves is skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus).
04 JUN 2019 | PNC. William County, VA | “Two-board Bridge”
Location, location, location.
Seepage areas in the forest are prime locations for hunting habitat-specific odonates such as petaltails and some species of spiketails.
The Backstory
DSA members Ken Larsen and Michael Ready saw and photographed a single male Sable Clubtail (S. rogersi) on 01 June 2010 in Prince William County. Nine years later, neither Ken nor Michael were able to recall the exact location of their sighting, but they were able to point me toward the general vicinity where I might “rediscover” one of the descendants of the Sable they’d seen.
I asked Mike Powell to help me hunt for Sable. Mike did some solo exploration before we visited the site together. He mentioned there is a LOT of skunk cabbage along one of the trails he had followed. As soon as I saw the place, Mike will tell you I said “We should find Gray Petaltail here.” Not long afterward, we spotted the first of many T. thoreyi!
Coming full circle, Mike spotted a single male Sable Clubtail dragonfly about a week later in the same “neighborhood.” We searched the location intensively several more times but never saw another Sable.
Although Sable doesn’t live in seeps, our search for the right habitat for Sable led us to several seeps that are tributaries of the small creek where S. rogersi does live.
Gear Talk
Notice the disjointed human legs at the top of the image — they belong to Mike Powell, my good friend and photowalking buddy. Sometimes I get so focused on the subject of interest that I don’t see the bigger picture. I could say I included Mike’s legs in order to provide a sense of scale, but the truth is it’s an unintended consequence of poor photo composition.
Also gotta love the blown highlights in the photo! The high dynamic range between the shadows of the forest canopy and direct sunlight would have been better photographed as an HDR composite image.
Related Resources
- Skunk Cabbage – A Sign of Spring [Plant ID Guide], by Black Owl Outdoors (2:16)
- Skunk Cabbage 102, by Black Owl Outdoors (2:19)
Copyright © 2019 Walter Sanford. All rights reserved.
Tags: Family Cordulegastridae (Spiketails), Family Gomphidae (Clubtails), Family Petaluridae (Petaltails), forest seep, gear talk, odonate habitat, Sable Clubtail dragonfly, skunk cabbage, Stenogomphurus rogersi, Symplocarpus foetidus
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