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2. Fly Hatch Talk
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3. species taxonomy

A few days after unexpectedly collecting a female dun of this species, but in a sad, bedraggled shape, I went back to the same pool to see if I could find more. I was able to catch this one male dun during a dusk emergence dominated by other species, and he made it home in prime shape for photos.

These duns were emerging sporadically throughout a cloudy evening at the end of June. Had I looked more closely when I caught this one and realized it represented my first collection of this genus, or just noticed the really striking coloration, I would have set my fly rod on shore and spent more time lurking mid-river with my net trying to catch more of them emerging (and at least one in better shape). It's always a bit difficult to identify a female dun, but in this case the three longitudinal stripes on the sternites are very distinctive and narrow the choices to Caudatella heterocaudata and Caudatella columbiella. However, the length of the fore wing measured with a caliper is 7.25 mm, whereas columbiella should be no more than 6 mm, so heterocaudata appears to be the correct ID.

This is a widely distributed species in western Montana but never abundant. Note the length of the middle tail, a key to the identification of this genus.