[Odonata-l] [se-odonata] Little Big Days

[Joshua Rose]

Hey all,

Just finished going through what sketchy records I've kept for my  
three years of odonate walks at Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park.  
I have the species total recorded for 36 dates. Seasons seem  
surprisingly discrete in diversity recorded per walk. Winter season  
seems to run roughly from Xmas through mid-March, with an average just  
short of 11 species per 2-hour walk, 12 walks recorded. This is skewed  
up a bit by this past spring, when February featured two outliers of  
16 and 18 species, definitely far beyond anything seen in the same  
month of 2006 or 2007; other than those two dates, high of the other  
10 trips was 11 species, low 5. Spring season is brief, basically just  
the latter 2/3 of March, with an average of 14 species per trip, low  
13, high 18, 5 trips. April kicks off the summer, which lasts through  
roughly the end of October, average around 22 species, low 20, high  
28, 15 trips. And fall is almost as brief as spring, basically just  
November, with average of 17, low 13, high 20, 4 trips. (This data  
seems to be screaming out "graph me!" but it's too late at night and  
I'm off duty, maybe tomorrow when I'm in the office...)

Did not keep a complete list on 8-24-07, but did note observing six  
species of gomphid (the LRGV has only 9 recorded to date) and two  
threadtails. I guess I was too excited over them to care about the  
rest of the list!

Have never attempted an all-day ode-o-thon. I had one on the calendar  
for last month but Hurricane Dolly scuttled that plan, have not yet  
managed to reschedule it. I may have already posted here about Martin  
Reid tallying 50 species in one day this past June, visiting three  
sites in Hidalgo County (Bentsen, NABA's International Butterfly Park,  
and McAllen Nature Center). I know that Tom Langscheid has done a few,  
his annual summer solstice dragonfly count in the King Ranch vicinity;  
I will have to post to TexOdes and see if he has numbers to share.

Cheers,

Josh


Joshua S. Rose, Ph.D.
World Birding Center
Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park
joshua.rose at tpwd.state.tx.us
956-584-9156 x 236


> On Aug 12, 2008, at 1:20 PM, Dennis Paulson wrote:
>> Hal,
>>
>> Thanks for the info. That certainly bears out what I have observed  
>> over many years of being interested in odonate biodiversity. The  
>> northeastern United States is a very rich area indeed, with well- 
>> studied localities ending up with impressively large species lists  
>> when you add in the seasonal and year-to-year changes. It would be  
>> interesting to see more of these numbers.
>>
>> I looked through my field notes for Florida visits in the last 8  
>> years. I visited the state in Jun 04, Apr 05, Dec 07, and Apr 08.  
>> My largest list for a site visit was 16 species in the panhandle,  
>> 13 on the peninsula. I saw 18 species in an entire day in  
>> Everglades National Park, 19 in an entire day in the Big Cypress  
>> area. There is a peninsula effect in Florida, with species  
>> diversity decreasing down the peninsula, but even in the far north,  
>> you don't see high diversity at a single site. By way of contrast,  
>> in South Carolina in May we found in the high 20s at several  
>> localities, although it was with several carloads of people looking  
>> rather than just me, so that could play a large part in the  
>> difference. Nevertheless, the typical biodiversity gradient of more  
>> species at lower latitudes seems to be absent, if not reversed, for  
>> odonates along the Atlantic states of the US, a rather unusual  
>> situation.
>>
>> I'm posting this also to other listserves, as it may be of wider  
>> interest.
>>
>> Dennis

On Aug 13, 2008, at 11:38 AM, carl rothfels wrote:
> Cheating a bit, perhaps, and heading north -- both the Algonquin  
> Provincial Park Odonate Count and the Hamilton Odonate Count (both  
> in Ontario) have hit one-day counts of 62 species. These counts are  
> run like Christmas Bird Counts - same sized count circle divided  
> among teams that record everything they see. So not the same as a  
> single-party big day, but gives another measure of local diversity.  
> Both counts also boast a cumulative species count in the 75-80  
> species range, I think.
>
> carl rothfels
> durham, NC
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Paul Bedell <pbedell at comcast.net>
> Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2008 12:02:25 PM
>
> Looking back in my records, I see that for a Bioblitz at Pocahontas  
> State Park in Chesterfield Co. VA, I and two others on the odonate  
> team recorded 31 species for May 10 - 11, 2002 ( a little early in  
> the odonate season).  My total species list for this park, all  
> dates, is 68.  And this is quite unexceptional piedmont forested  
> habitat.
>
> I enter all my data in Avisys, a listing program, and its very  
> helpful for pulling up info like this.
>
> Paul Bedell
> Richmond
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Giff Beaton
> To: 'South East Odonata'
> Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2008 3:00 PM
> Subject: [se-odonata] Little Big Days
>
>
> As a reformed birder, who used to do a lot of birding Big Days, I  
> have pondered this exact question for a few years now. My personal  
> best for one day was an accidental 38, not quite in Hal’s league,  
> but I only know that because I just went through a bunch of old  
> lists like Dennis did and counted some that looked big. This was up  
> in NW GA in Dade County in Aug 2002, and was only a morning but if  
> you drove a couple hours south into the Coastal Plain you could  
> easily add 18-20 (no Anax, missing several easy skimmers, no  
> Progomphus, only 2 Celithemis, etc). Easily. With a little planning,  
> at least in Georgia, I think you could do 60-65 species in one day…  
> but you would have to justify the gas it would take too.
>
>
> I agree with Dennis also that any count above 20 is a decent count  
> for a site, or a count that means a decent site, however you prefer  
> to look at it. Really nice clean diverse sites can of course top  
> that pretty easily, but sadly I don’t know of many sites like that  
> in the SE.
>
>
> Giff Beaton
>
> Marietta GA
>
> www.giffbeaton. com/dragonflies. htm
>

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