Odonata of Oe-Cusse's Journal

I've been waiting for the rain for such a long time. We have been getting some rains but not the usual down pours, so a lot of the ponds/puddles remain dry but we are getting more grass and a lusher vegetation. I had a couple of hours to spare so I tried focusing my efforts in expanding the checklist of Odonatans found in Kolam Xina.

In a previous journal entry about this site, I had mentioned that the best site to find Odonatans was in the larger pond which remain with water throughout the year. While that may be true during the dry season, during the rainy season you can find more species in the first water outlet reducing travel distance and time.

The first checklist during the dry season yielded the following species:

1. Crocothemis servilia
2. Diplacodes trivialis
3. Orthetrum sabina
4. Pantala flavescens

Since we have more grass growing after the first rains I decided to inspect closer the grass blades to see what kind of grasshoppers I could find here. It has been a while since I record an tobacco grasshopper (atractomorpha) and, was quickly called to inspect a minute damselfly. Slightly short of 20mm in length, given that I had not recorded any Agriocnemis in this site, and considering that the cow manure close by did not allow me to position myself to take a well framed picture in the wild I decided to catch it and keep it in a small sample jar.

I then moved along the edged of the small pond, as I now have my Gum boot all the time in the car for these special occasions. Here I saw what resembled a Agriocnemis, as was very excited. However in my first try, the Flash (a Nissin i40) did not fire, and while I was switching the flash output to try to squeeze more juice out of my eneloop batteries, puff, he was gone.

I cursed because I was already late for lunch with my work colleagues. I went back home to change into drop my camera and feeling slightly defeated went for lunch. I was able to expand the checklist of this site with a sighting of the ubiquitous Ischnura senegalensis.

After lunch I was compelled to return to the same spot and take pictures of the Agriocnemis in the wild, but a problem with my newly acquired editing software (Luminar 2018) meant that I had to trouble shoot until close to 5 PM, by then it was cloudy and horrible, and I though to myself, I will not photograph anything and will eventually get very wet in the process, since I was bored of figuring out what was happening and after sending emails to the software's support team I decided to go.

Three minutes after getting my gum boots wet, I saw several individuals and was able to photographed two specimens which I suspect to be Agriocnemis pygmaea: 18751981. 18751982.

I did see some Tholymis tillarga (Fabricius, 1798), here as well but was not able to photograph them as they rarely perch, always flying.

The updated checklist of Odanatans found in Kolam Xina is

1. Crocothemis servilia
2. Diplacodes trivialis
3. Orthetrum sabina
4. Pantala flavescens
5. Ischnura senegalensis
6. Agriocnemis pygmaea c.f.
7. Tholymis tillarga