Bugging Out In Northern Ontario, Part 2: Parry Sound To Tilden Lake

I woke to a warm and hazy morning at Horseshoe Lake Conservation Reserve. I had several goals for the day. 1: Spend a couple of hours exploring Horseshoe Lake; 2: put in a solid search for a quite localized damselfly called the Alkali Bluet in North Bay; and 3: find somewhere secluded with decent habitat for car-camping and mothing in the evening. 

Horseshoe Lake Conservation Reserve, Parry Sound District

The deer flies were quite eager to accompany me as personal guides that I neither asked for nor wanted. But I'll take deer flies over black flies or mosquitoes any time! In just a couple of days I would be dealing with all three, so fending off a few pesky deer flies this morning was no trouble at all. 

Mountain Deer Fly (Chrysops montanus) - Horseshoe Lake Conservation Reserve, Parry Sound District

Despite the hazy and overcast conditions, the air temperature was high enough and the sun had enough vigour that instigate decent insect activity. I quickly added several odonates to the trip list including Sedge Sprite, Frosted Whiteface and Common Whitetail. 

Frosted Whiteface (Leucorrhinia frigida) - Horseshoe Lake Conservation Reserve, Parry Sound District

Sedge Sprite (Nehalennia irene) - Horseshoe Lake Conservation Reserve, Parry Sound District

On a couple of occasions, some splashing from the nearby wetland caused me to look up from the insects nectaring on the boneset and yarrow. First was a family group of Hooded Mergansers eyeing me suspiciously. 

Hooded Merganser - Horseshoe Lake Conservation Reserve, Parry Sound District

The other distraction from my insect photography session was caused by a family of North American River Otters! They were rather curious of me and one of them swam a bit closer, grunting and snorting at me. Eventually, their curiosity satisfied, they slunk away and vanished around a bend in the lake. 

North American River Otters - Horseshoe Lake Conservation Reserve, Parry Sound District

North American River Otter - Horseshoe Lake Conservation Reserve, Parry Sound District

The drive up to North Bay went well and by early afternoon I passed the village of Powassan. As is tradition, I stopped in at the Powassan lagoons to look for birds and bugs. I have had some success birding here in the past, finding species like Nelson's Sparrow, Brant, American Golden-Plover and Baird's Sandpiper on past visits. You never know what will drop in!

Monarch (Danaus plexippus) - Powassan Lagoons, Parry Sound District

My luck at Powassan continued; this time, it was an Upland Sandpiper flying high overhead and vocalizing regularly. This can be a tricky species to find in migration; most of my records are from July and early August and several of them have been at night. This species has distinctive vocalizations in flight which makes detecting one a bit easier. 

Otherwise, the birding at the Powassan lagoons was relatively slow. The water levels in one of the cells was very high, while the other cell had almost no water, so there wasn't much habitat for shorebirds. A few warblers in the spruces to the south included a Tennessee, one of our earlier migrants. But mostly, I photographed bugs and plants. 

Pearl Crescent (Phyciodes tharos) - Powassan Lagoons, Parry Sound District

Cherry-faced Meadowhawk (Sympetrum internum) - Powassan Lagoons, Parry Sound District

From here, it was on to North Bay and a search for a rare bluet. The Alkali Bluet is a bit of an enigma in Ontario. Though it is a common species out west, there are only a handful of sites in Ontario where it has been recorded. One reason for this is because it doesn't really stand out from the other bluets - the field marks are subtle to say the least. Lake Nipissing seems to have a reasonable population of them, and Sunset Park in North Bay is the site of many of the recent records. Even still, it is not recorded every year, mainly because there are not that many people searching for it. 

Tule Bluet (Enallagma carunculatum) - Sunset Park, North Bay, Nipissing District

I was happy to see numbers of bluets flying around the rocky shoreline of Sunset Park, mostly oblivious to the people out enjoying the beautiful afternoon. The bluet in the above photo can be identified as a Tule Bluet, in part due to the relatively high percentage of black on each of the abdominal segments. My quarry, the Alkali, has a little more blue on the some of the anterior and middle segments. 

Eventually I found a couple of suspicious bluets that seemed to have the correct ratio of blue to black on the abdominal segments, and I photographed one extensively. After much time spent poring over my field guide, I am reasonably confident that this individual is an Alkali Bluet. Success. 

Alkali Bluet (Enallagma clausum) - Sunset Park, North Bay, Nipissing District

I left North Bay behind and continued driving north. Instead of trying to make up a lot of ground, I decided to set up my moth sheets and car camp at a site I've stayed at before, just half an hour north of North Bay. While waiting for sunset, I patrolled the dirt road for insects. The temperature was dropping quickly and not much was flying, but there is always something interesting for a naturalist to find, especially if you don't limit yourself to just birds, for example. 

Tricolored Bumble Bee (Bombus ternarius) - Tilden Lake, Nipissing District

American Branded Skipper (Hesperia colorado) - Tilden Lake, Nipissing District

Other than a few Ebony Jewelwings, there weren't many odonates at all; the cooler temperatures and hazy conditions were not conducive to finding these solar-powered predators. Eventually I noticed a darner cruising low over the road and a quick swing with my net produced the first Canada Darner of the trip. This is probably the most common darner I see in Ontario, but any darner in hand is a good one!

Canada Darner (Aeshna canadensis) - Tilden Lake, Nipissing District

I made myself a quick dinner of a ham, salami, and Swiss cheese wrap along with an apple, and then it was time for the evening's main event. 

Mothing at Tilden Lake, Nipissing District

As I had anticipated, the cooler temperatures somewhat limited the diversity of moths and other insects. But that doesn't mean it was a slow night. Out of the 48 species of moths that I tallied, two were lifers and several others were species that I hadn't seen many times before. 

Bicolored Moth (Manulea bicolor) - Tilden Lake, Nipissing District

Hologram Moth (Diachrysia balluca) - Tilden Lake, Nipissing District

Hulda impudens - Tilden Lake, Nipissing District

Scallop Shell Moth (Hydria sp.) - Tilden Lake, Nipissing District

This was certainly the showiest species of the night, a Great Tiger Moth. I had to move it onto the nearby vegetation for some additional photos. 

Great Tiger Moth (Arctic caja) - Tilden Lake, Nipissing District

Great Tiger Moth (Arctia caja) - Tilden Lake, Nipissing District

Often, a moth will appear that stumps me. This is one of them. It is likely in the genus Cenopis, but all of the similar appearing ones are from much further south. Perhaps it is an unusual variant of a common species like Cenopis pettitana. 

Cenopis sp. (tentative ID) - Tilden Lake, Nipissing District

Both of these next insects, a midge and a rove beetle, were new species for me. 

Stenochironomus pulchripennis - Tilden Lake, Nipissing District

Deleaster dichrous - Tilden Lake, Nipissing District

The Moth Of The Night was this rare species called Epinotia corylana. There are just a handful of records on iNaturalist, of which only one was from Ontario. As is typical, the most interesting moths are often the drabbest!

Epinotia corylana - Tilden Lake, Nipissing District