Oak Creek Canyon Oding

On Thursday, June 15th, 2017, I went oding at Oak Creek Canyon just north of Sedona, Arizona, in Coconino County.  Oding wasn't the only thing I did, as the time was heavily consumed with birding and a shorter time was spent looking at leps.  My main ode target along this stretch of habitat was the Apache Spiketail, a large dragonfly that oddly likes smaller mountain streams such as Oak Creek.  I struck out on that after a very long day, but I had a handful of lifers and the time was great.  Oak Creek Canyon is one of my favorite places in Arizona, and I hope to visit it again.  Here are the odes that I saw:

Riffle Darner lifer.  Seen at Cave Springs Campground while I was looking at a vagrant and my Arizona first Yellow-throated Vireo.

Springwater Dancer

Tonto Dancer.  My lifers and one of my favorite odes of the day.

My first Common Whitetails

My first Red Rock Skimmers.  They are awesome looking, and they were abundant along Oak Creek.  I probably had about 40 of them throughout my four mile hike.  An outing favorite.

My first Canyon Rubyspots

American Rubyspot?

Flame Skimmer

My first Northern Bluet

Sooty Dancer.  My first great looks at this awesome species.  Large for a Dancer.

My first Arizona Snaketails.  This species was very fun to find and was probably my favorite ode of the day.

My first Gray Sanddragons.

Blue-eyed Darner

Arizona Snaketail and Canyon Rubyspot

Thanks to Justin Jones and Caleb Strand for helping me identify and confirm the identity of many of the Odes on this blog post.  Thanks to Oak Creek for being...Oak Creek!