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

Tue Aug 19 13:09:33 PDT 2008

Just for interest we have 109 species recorded for Patuxent Research Refuge
(half way between Washington DC and Baltimore Maryland).  Single day totals
consisting of a single person in the late spring can easily clear 40 species
but it drops quickly by mid-summer.  I have led a dragonfly field day in
mid-August at Patuxent for the Audubon Naturalist Society for the past
decade of so and even then we average in the low thirties for a daily total.

Richard Orr

Mid-Atlantic Invertebrate Field Studies

5215 Durham Rd - East

Columbia, MD 21044

odonata457 at comcast.net

www.marylandinsects.com

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dragonflyhunter/

  _____  

From: odonata-l-bounces at listhost.ups.edu
[mailto:odonata-l-bounces at listhost.ups.edu] On Behalf Of Joshua Rose
Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2008 1:23 AM
To: South East Odonata
Cc: Odonata-l
Subject: Re: [Odonata-l] [se-odonata] Little Big Days

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 <mailto:giffbeaton at mindspring.com>  Beaton

To: 'South <mailto:se-odonata at yahoogroups.com>  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. <http://www.giffbeaton.com/dragonflies.htm>
com/dragonflies. htm

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