The last four days I've been spending time at one of our Clark County Park....Old Reid. Four days ago, while on one of my frequent visits looking for dragonflies, I photographed what I thought was a Carolina Saddlebags dragonfly. While it crossed my mind that it was late in the season to see a Carolina, I captured some pics and entered them as an observation in iNaturalist.
To my surprise, experts quickly identified it as a Striped Saddlebags. This was a new dragonfly for me and after doing a bit of checking, I found out why it isn't often seen in Ohio.
From the University of Wisconsin:
"Saddlebags are called saddlebags because of the pigmented area on the wings on either side of the abdomen. Red, Black, and Carolina Saddlebags are in the “broadsaddle” group, because their irregularly-shaped “saddles” are wide.
Striped Saddlebags, named for the conspicuous markings on the thorax, are in the “narrowsaddle” group because the smooth-edged “saddles” don’t extend very far into their wings.
They’re a tropical species that are “vagrants” or “accidentals” here – not regular migrants (only about 15 species of dragonflies are migratory), but unpredictable wanderers. As a result, they’re a “Most Wanted” species among dragonfly-watchers in Wisconsin and elsewhere. There are small, resident populations in far South Florida and along the US-Mexico border, but they’re more at home through Central and South America, the Galapagos, and the Bahamas. Striped Saddlebags wander farther north than other narrowsaddle saddlebags do."
I checked the iNaturalist observation database and found that there were only 31 observations in Ohio going back to 2006....and only 2 prior to mine here so far this year. That's a pretty special visitor!
So, four days later, the Striped Saddlebags is still present at Old Reid. What a treat!
Here's some pics from today....
