herons and dragonflies

There was a full moon a few days ago; the reflection on the calm waters of Shinnecock Bay and the ghostly look of the woods in the moonlight have been memorable. A walk down to the water flushed a night-feeding Great Blue Heron, still not a common sight around these parts. This morning, in bright sunlight, two Green Herons were perched on tree-tops on opposite sides of the marsh. The one on the far side was high up on a maple and gulping away with that strange Green Heron call so different from the more familiar loud alarm sounds we usually hear from this species; I would guess that it's the male that does the gulping. The other one, perhaps the female, was on a low and isolated Red Cedar near the near edge of the woods; it was watching my every move, letting me get quite close before it took off -- silently! -- flying up the marsh. These birds, although far apart, were almost certainly in contact with one another and are probably a mated pair. A mated pair trying, one hopes, to distract me from their nearby nest. Great Blue Herons do not nest around here but Little Green Herons (that used to be their name) definitely do.

This has been an outstanding year for the Seaside Dragonlets (love that name) with literally dozens of them everywhere in and around the marsh/ I even saw a pair flying in tandem over the creek this morning; this is not the actual mating act but the male dragonfly's way of guarding his mate from other males. What are Dragonlets? They, of course, a kind of dragonfly that lives in salt marshes and they are, I suspect, a major prey for our Purple Martins. The Martins, after a period of seeming quiet, are now extremely active around the colony, hunting low over the marsh and even above the surface of the water, seemingly responding to a major dragonfly hatch. Although these large swallows have the reputation of being mosquito eaters, they go mostly for larger prey like dragonflies and butterflies.

Seaside Dragonlets are small, mostly black with delicate transparent wings. A much more flamboyant odonate appeared yesterday. The Halloween Skimmer has a yellow and black body and its wings are often orange and black: the transparent wings have a buff or orangey tint interrupted by black stripes. The one that was fluttering around yesterday in the reeds and bushes next to the pond had wings that were tinted more yellow-and-black than orange-and-black but it was a Halloween Pennant nevertheless -- perhaps a female or young one.

Eric Salzman