- 2004, seen at Sherwood Park, Sumpter Twp. several times, first county sight record.
- 2005, seen two different occasions at the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge, Humbug Marsh Unit (DRIWR).
- 2005, seen in Northville Twp. in a retention pond.
- 2006, seen in Taylor, in another retention pond.


Although I carry the shorter net with the narrower mouth, I was a bit closer, directly behind her, and tend to be a little more of a patient stalker than Stylurus. My net bag has already been sewn up a few times, so ripping it on the locust thorns was a risk I was willing to take. Stylurus was ready off to the right. I swung, and made a clean catch without even tearing the net.
Extracting it from the net, we found out that indeed, we'd finally bagged our county voucher. This was a different location at the DRIWR than I'd seen Comet Darners previously. I suspect they occur here because the river acts as a corridor; there are no appropriate fishless ponds (or any other surface water) for them to breed in. But this bodes well for when ponds are built on the Refuge.

From the photo above, it's hard to get any true perspective on size, and she sure looks like a green darner (although the big, long reddish legs don't seem right for junius). We decided to snag a green darner just for comparison:

We resumed our survey, in which we ended up with 25 species. Sedge Sprite (Nehalennia irene) was a new species for the Refuge, for a total of 33 species since I first began doing bird work there several years ago.
We'll be doing biweekly surveys for the rest of the summer. Stay tuned.
1 comment:
The best part is... You caught it, and not that tall guy with the net.
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