Happy New Year! Let the yearning begin. Wait, what? Yep, I’m fighting feeling like I can’t wait for the start of the new odonate hunting season.
Realistically it will be a few months before adult dragonflies and damselflies are flying again, but that’s a good thing. Wait, did I just say that? Yes, and here’s why.
The odonate hunting “off season” provides a good opportunity to plan for the next campaign by making a list of target species and laying out when and where to look for them.
Why is it important to make a plan? Because the season starts slowly but explodes quickly. To illustrate my point, take a look at my Odonate Calendar for adult flight dates of dragonfly species for the month of February (shown below). Not much happening until the end of the month, right?
Dragonflies (VA Flight Dates) | February 2022
Now look at March (shown below). There’s an explosion of species beginning around the second week in March. The boom continues into July before slowing down noticeably in August.
Dragonflies (VA Flight Dates) | March 2022
Also notice many of the spring species of dragonflies are habitat specialists that require extra time and effort to find. So my advice is start planning now for a more productive and satisfying season of odonate hunting.
Related Resources
Both of the following resources feature online, interactive calendars for dragonflies and damselflies based upon Dr. Steve Roble’s excellent datasets for the Commonwealth of Virginia.
- Odonate calendars updated for 2021 – a blog post from March 2021
- Odonate Calendars – a permanent page in my blog
Copyright © 2022 Walter Sanford. All rights reserved.
Tags: Fairfax County, habitat specialist, Loudoun County, Virginia
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January 4, 2022 at 4:16 pm |
Shaming us lep folks at LepLog into doing similar advance planning!
January 4, 2022 at 10:30 pm |
Encouraging, not shaming. 😉 In my experience, so many interesting species of odonates emerge around the same time that’s practically impossible to hunt for all of them. That’s why I think a list of target species is helpful.