In 1999 Bob Cruden and Bud Gode published their inventory of Iowa odonates. Over a period of fifteen years, they covered all counties of the state and many sites numerous times. While their work was comprehensive, Iowa is a big state and even in fifteen years two guys cannot possibly be in all 99 counties during all flight seasons. In the past three years, a few of us have added a number of records to our county database to further expand our knowledge of ranges. The thought has always been in the back of my mind that somewhere out there was a species that Bud and Bob missed. Even newcomers to this hobby have much to offer as this story is about to prove.

Aaron Brees is a hot young birder. For a couple of years now he has rolled his eyes as my summer attentions turned to odes, but somehow the allure of these winged jewels caught his interest this summer and it will no doubt be a summer he will not soon forget.

After returning from an early summer birding survey in the Lake Erie area, Aaron decided that his home county in southern Iowa was woefully under-represented in the Iowa Breeding Bird Atlas data. As he worked to rectify this, he began identifying a few odes flying in the same areas. I loaned him my small net and he ordered some equipment. The following chronology of events, documented in e-mail messages as he awaited delivery of his book and net, appears to be fantasy but is really only proof of how much we really do not know about distribution.

July 10 - E-mail from Aaron - "I also got a look at another bug that has clear wings, green eyes and a dark unmarked thorax. It looks like a Prince Baskettail but is slightly smaller and seems to not have any wing markings. I know I could have caught it but a Prince kept running it off and it finally disappeared."

July 11 - E-mail from Aaron - "I managed to catch and photograph a male and a female of my unidentified--maybe Common Baskettail--dragonfly. I am going to go to Stephen's in the morning and try to catch something to use the last of my film on, then go to Des Moines and drop it at a one hour place while I bird Saylorville. Hopefully the pictures will be good enough for you to identify some of these guys for me."

July 12 - E-mail from Aaron - "Got my dragon pictures back. They are not very good but they should be sufficient for ID purposes. I am very confidant that the darner is a Cyrano Darner. The ones that we were thinking were Common Baskettails are not. I believe they are emeralds. I see from your map that no emerald is expected down here, and mine do not exactly look like Plains Emeralds (the yellow thorax spots/stripes are not very obvious) although that is what they must be I guess. Unfortunately it was overcast and the lighting was poor when I took the pictures. I also made a mistake in composing the pictures so they are too dark. Hopefully you can make some sense of them or better yet, maybe we can relocate them--they have been consistently in the same spot."

July 13 - Thinking that perhaps we had a nice range extension for Plains Emerald (Somotochlora ensigera) I headed south. Aaron and I spent the day trying to catch his emeralds. I managed to get a net on one female and we had the first state record of Mocha Emerald (Somotachlora lineraes). There were fair numbers flying but the only ones we could get a net on were females. 

Aaron promised to keep trying to catch a male in the ensuing days. Each day brought more frustration as the bugs were flying but males were just out of reach.

July 17 - E-mail from Aaron - "Finally! I caught a male this afternoon at Rathbun W.A. north of Promise City. It was hunting over the soybean field along the edge of the tree line that lines the dry creek that we walked into on your first trip down. So, a new site and the bug. Completely unexpected."

The success of finally collecting a male of a new Iowa species was overshadowed by the questions on the phone that evening. "Do Eastern Pondhawks always have those white claspers?" "Yep." "Do they ever have black faces?" "Nope." "Damn!"

We both knew what he had seen so it was back to southern Iowa on Saturday, July 20. At an old oxbow of the South Fork of the Chariton River we photographed and collected Aaron's second state record within two weeks - Slaty Skimmer (Libellula incesta).

Nearly as exciting, had the heat not about done us in, was discovering a large number of Blue-faced Meadowhawks (Sympetrum ambiguum) on our walk back to the car. This is a species previously recorded from only one site in the state and about 150 miles to the northeast. A few days later, Aaron found yet another population in the next county to the north.

Not a bad summer! Wonder what will happen when he gets good...