High Summer

The Ashuelot River in August is usually so low in places you can walk across it without getting your knees wet, but when I went there last week it was about as high as we like to see it. I have a feeling that someone somewhere opened the gates on a dam or something since then though, because two or three days after I took this shot the water had gone down considerably, and mud showed on the banks.

I went to the river to see if the beautiful cedar waxwings were there. At this time of year the sun has a certain slant at this location. In the evening insects are lit up by the light and I assume that the waxwings have an easier time seeing them. They wait in the trees and bushes and fly out and snap up mosquitoes, dragonflies, and other insects that happen to be flying through the shafts of light. There is a small maple tree there that has died and it’s a favorite perch, so I wait for them to get used to my being there and then try to get their photo when they land in it.

The waxwings love many of the berries that grow along the river such as the arrow wood viburnum berries seen here. Other berries that grow along the river in this immediate area are silky dogwood, pokeweed, wild grapes, Virginia creeper, and poison ivy, and waxwings love them all.

I like the way this waxwing was peeking up over the branches with its eyes probably on an unwary insect. I’ve seen them snatch dragonflies right off the bushes a few times. The waxwings move in small flocks and can strip a crabapple tree of its fruit in no time at all. The name “waxwing” comes from the way the tips of their wings look like they’ve been dipped in red wax. The undersides of their wings flash bright white in the evening sun and they are very beautiful. I love their little bandit mask and how sleek they are and how they dive, swoop and twirl in the air when chasing insects. If I had to make a list of favorite birds, cedar waxwings would be near the top.

I hope everyone is seeing and hearing their favorite birds this year. I downloaded the “Merlin” birding app from Google Play and it has opened a new world. Now, though I might not see a bird, I can record it and identify it with the app. It’s both amazing and fun, and I now know which songs are by which birds. I believe the free app also comes in an Apple version.

I went to a local park the other day to visit the small pond there. Usually there are hundreds of dragonflies there but on this day I had to struggle to find any. I sat on a bench wondering where they had all gone and then I saw several cedar waxwings streaking out of the trees and I knew. All the dragonflies were in hiding. From what I’ve seen of waxwings, they were wise to hide.

I’ve been trying to get better shots of the emerald spread wing damselflies. I’ve discovered a spot where they gather so I sit on a boulder on the pond shore and learn their habits, which are much the same as dragonflies. One noticeable difference is, these insects don’t have the same great speed as dragonflies. The “spread wing” part of the name comes from the way they keep their wings spread when at rest.

Unfortunately the spot where they gather at the pond is heavily shaded so I haven’t been completely happy with any shot I’ve gotten so far. This one does show the underside of its abdomen but doesn’t show the sky blue color that I had hoped to get. One day I’ll catch them perching in the sunshine and then I’ll be able to show you their beautiful colors the way they should be seen. Meanwhile I’ll wait.

One of the things that you come to understand quite quickly in nature study is that you will spend a lot of time just waiting and watching, because 99% of it is simply being in the right place at the right time. Knowing the habits of that which you study helps, but nature will always teach us patience one way or another.

I found a staghorn sumac with a deformed flower head at the end of a branch. You can pick out 2 tiny flowers in full bloom there in the lower right. This is something few people ever see.

A fern shadow spilled over a log. This is what I mean when I say that no matter where you look there is beauty. It is always there, waiting for us to discover it.

A few of the Indian cucumber root plants are throwing in the towel and taking on their beautiful deep purple fall colors. The berries will soon be ripening on plants that have them.

Purple loosestrife is one of our most invasive plants but I always have to admit that they’re quite pretty, even if do they look like someone hung them on the stalk before ironing them.

Joe Pye weed is blooming, with its wispy, thread like flower petals calling to all the insects. Bees and butterflies love them. Depending on which version of the story you believe a Native American named Joe Pye used this plant to heal, or the name of the plant he used was named Jopi. Either way the story points to the plant’s one time medicinal use.

I was happy to see what I thought was a monarch butterfly on some Joe Pye weed but no, it was a viceroy, and I know that because of the black lines on its hind wings. Still, it’s a beautiful butterfly and there haven’t been many of those around this summer. I imagined that two months of rain had a lot to do with that but that can’t be it because Maryland is in drought and they have as few butterflies as we do.

It was a very windy day when, as I walked through some tall grass, two pearl crescent butterflies flew a few feet ahead, always staying out of the wind by staying down low in the grass. This shot was a challenge because the camera kept wanting to focus on the grass and leaves instead of the butterfly. This butterfly is small and seems to be about the size of one wing of the bigger butterflies like monarchs or admirals.

One day I saw a very strange bird asleep on a log at a pond. You couldn’t see its face but one eye stared out of the photo I sent to a birding friend. He came back with the name Muscovy duck, which is a domesticated bird that will occasionally fly off into nature. It can’t fly as well as a wild duck or goose so it just kind of hangs out near water. The next day it was still there and it let me get a shot of its face. I saw then that it was an odd duck indeed. The Jimmy Durante of waterfowl. It was as big as a Canada goose.

A few days later I saw posters about a lost pet duck and sure enough, this was the duck I had seen. The poster said “she was very old, lost and probably scared” but she didn’t seem scared when I was near her. More curious than scared, I’d say. But anyhow, I called the phone number on the poster but didn’t get an answer, so hopefully they’ve found her.

Canada geese were in sight of the Muscovy duck, eating the same pond weeds that it eats. The duck will bully smaller wild ducks but it didn’t seem to want to tangle with the geese. That is probably wise.

Soon they’ll all be eating the seeds of American bur reed, which dots the shallows here and there.

Tall white rattlesnake root was once used in a poultice by Native Americans to cure headache, fever, and rattlesnake bite. A tonic made from its bitter roots was also used in place of quinine by early settlers and it is also called gall of the earth due to its bitterness. I like its beautiful lily like white flowers, which always speak of quiet serenity to me. Nothing seems to bother this plant; I never see it eaten by insects or harmed by munching animals, and that could be because it is toxic. It is native to the northeastern and midwestern U.S. and will grow as far south as North Carolina.

I like this scene for two reasons. The waterlily is obvious, but not so obvious is the pattern in the pickerel weed leaf. As fall gets closer these leaves will develop some beautiful and colorful flowing patterns. The light was also beautiful on this day. It looked like it was shining out from the water rather than on it.

We used to call this a Turk’s cap lily but I don’t know if they’re still called that now when people are so easily offended by terminology which in truth, usually comes from ignorance rather than malice. But names don’t matter. It’s an unusually shaped flower in the lily family and one that I’ve never loved enough to grow. I found these growing in a local park.

When I walk through public gardens I’m always surprised to see plants that the people I used to work for wanted nothing to do with. Anything in the allium family was hands off, probably due to the way garlic chives could take over a garden. That meant nodding onion was also left out, which I think is too bad. It’s a plant that I could have used in some of the gardens I worked in.

I saw a petunia that made me think of a cloud.

I like the tree branch patterns in a balloon flower. They’re almost always there, as if the shadows of overhead branches are falling on the flower. I also love that shade of deep blue.

For those who don’t know, balloon flower gets its name from its balloon like buds, which look as if they’re full of gas. Really there is just air inside but they will make a soft popping sound if you squeeze them.  They are native to Japan, Korea, China, and parts of Russia but are now grown all over the world.  Cough syrup was once made from the plant’s roots but I’ve never heard how effective it was.

I see far more of this color bee balm than I do red these days, and I think that’s too bad because I liked the native red. I used to grow the red ones and I had bees and hummingbirds all over them. I’ve never seen a bee or a hummingbird on these plants but I can’t sit and watch for them like I could when I grew the red ones, so maybe they do attract the birds and bees. I hope they do.

In summer, the song sings itself.  ~William Carlos Williams

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Things I’ve Seen

When I first started trying to get photos of dragonflies it seemed like they just never sat still, but after a while I found that they do, and sometimes for quite a long time. This male twelve spotted skimmer stayed still for a while so I was able to get close enough for a useable shot. He gets his name from the 12 brown spots on his wings, but some people (and many books) count the white spots and call him the 10 spotted skimmer. Only mature males have these white spots. Females and immature males have the twelve brown wing spots but not the white spots.

I think this is another skimmer; the widow skimmer. Bothe males and females have the dark wing spots but only mature males have the white ones. Adult males also have the powdery blueish white color on their abdomen. The name skimmer comes from the way that they fly low over the water, but some are also called perchers. I’m always happy to see the perchers, the skimmers are a little too fast when they’re skimming.

I saw a dragonfly land one day but because of the distance, the bright sunlight, and my colorblindness it instantly disappeared among the cattail leaves. I thought I knew where it was though so I just shot blindly a few times, hoping the lens had caught sight of it. The above photo is the result, proving that yes, dumb luck plays a part in being a nature photographer. I’ve had a hard time identifying this one but I think it might be an eastern amber wing.

NOTE: Several blogging friends have said that this is a male calico pennant and after a little research I agree with them. Thank you all very much for the help, I appreciate it.

While I was watching the dragonflies I was also looking for flowering cattails. Out of many hundreds this was the only one that had flowered up to that point but it won’t be long before they all have flowers. Native Americans used the roots of cattails to make flour and also wove the leaves into matting. Cattails produce more edible starch per acre than potatoes, rice, taros or yams, and during World War II plans were being made to feed American soldiers with that starch in the form of cattail flour. Studies showed that an acre of cattails would produce an average of 6,475 pounds of flour per year, but thankfully the war ended before the flour making could begin.

It was a hot but very windy day when I found this viceroy butterfly clinging to a leaf for dear life. I must have stood there for 20 minutes waiting for it to open its wings and it did every time I looked away or fiddled with the camera’s controls, so I ended up with one blurry shot of it with its flaps down. This shot shows how the strong wind was curling the tops of  its wings toward the camera. I was surprised that it could hang on at all. Those legs are small, but very strong.

There wasn’t any wind when I saw this eastern tiger swallowtail drinking from a vetch blossom but it was tilted in an unusual way so I never did get a really good shot of it. Now that I look at the photo I see that I could have gotten down lower and shot up at it, but then I probably would have been shooting into the sun. It’s amazing how birds, animals and insects use sunlight to their advantage and will often position themselves so the sun is behind them, meaning it is shining directly in your eyes if you try to see them. Fighter jet pilots use the same strategy to blind the enemy.

Since I work outside all day every day I always carry a small pocket camera, because as anyone who spends time outside knows, you just never know what you might see. One day I saw this Luna moth in the grass. At first I thought it was dead but it was just crawling through the grass rather than flying and I don’t know enough about them to know if this is normal behavior or not. Luna moths are one of the largest moths in North America, sometimes having a wingspan of as much as 4 1/2 inches. They are beautiful, with a white body, pinkish legs, and pale lime green wings. In northern regions the moth lives for only 7 days and produces only one generation, while in the south they can live for as long as 11 weeks and produce three generations.

We have a small yellow buggy that we use to get around the 760 acres where I work and one day this beetle landed on it. I haven’t been able to identify it but I think it’s one of the longhorn beetles. They are also called wood worms because of the way that many of them bore into wood. Some, like the invasive Asian longhorn beetle, can do serious damage to forests.

Along the Ashuelot River Queen Anne’s lace buds were just beginning to unfurl themselves in the sunshine.

Porcupine sedge (Carex hystericina) blossomed a few feet upriver. You can just see the tiny, almost microscopic wisps of whitish flowers at the pointed ends of some of the upper spiky protrusions (perigynia.) This plant is also called bottlebrush sedge, for obvious reasons. It’s very common near water and waterfowl and some songbirds love its seeds.

The stones showing in the river tell the story of how dry it has been. You don’t usually see this many until August but the water level is low enough in this spot right now to walk across without getting your knees wet, and we’re still in June. I suppose I shouldn’t complain; we’ve seen some damaging floods in recent years.

What I think might be bluejoint reedgrass (Calamagrostis canadensis) sparkles and shimmers in the breeze along the edges of the forests.

The closer you get, the more interesting it becomes. It’s a beautiful tall grass with very large seed heads.

It’s only when you take a real close look that you discover why it sparkles and shimmers so. Yellow pollen bearing male (staminate) flowers hang down, waiting for the wind will carry their pollen to waiting feathery white female (pistillate) flowers. Usually the pollen bearing male flowers will bloom and release pollen before the female flowers appear. In that way the pollen of one plant reaches and fertilizes nearby plants and the grass avoids fertilizing itself.

Orchard grass (Dactylis glomerata) is another tall, beautiful grass that seems to be having an extended blooming period this year. I wish more people would take a look at grass flowers because they can be very beautiful. And they’re easy to see because they’re virtually everywhere, even in vacant city lots.

Orchard grass is especially good for baling and it and most of the other pasture grasses grown on local farms will end up in hay bales. The lack of rain is working in the farmer’s favor and the first cutting of hay has dried well, but if the dryness lasts much longer it will start to work against them.

The male flowers of eastern white pine trees (Pinus strobus) are called pollen cones because that’s what they produce. Pine trees are wind pollinated and great clouds of pollen make it look like the trees are burning and releasing yellow green smoke each spring. Virtually everything gets dusted with pollen; cars, buildings, and even entire lakes and ponds. If you live near pine trees it’s impossible not to breathe some of it in and if you leave your windows open you’ll be doing some house dusting in the near future. Pine pollen is a strong antioxidant and it has been used medicinally around the world for thousands of years. Its health benefits were first written of in China nearly 5000 years ago and they are said to be numerous.

When the white pine’s pollen cones have shed all of their pollen they fall from the trees in the many millions and cover the ground for a short time. Here they’re suspended in a spider’s web.

Here in this part of the country our corn is supposed to be knee high by the fourth of July but it looks like the dryness might keep it shin high instead. When I was a boy cornfields stretched to the south as far as I could see, growing on rich bottomland along the Ashuelot River, built up by annual spring flooding over thousands of years. This land has been farmed for at least as long as I’ve been alive.

You might find a conspicuous lack of fungi and slime molds here this year but again, that’s because it has been so dry.  I did see a bracket fungus that was a little sad but it still had a blush of pinkish orange on it. Since orange is such a hard color to find in nature I thought I’d show it here.

I think we are bound to, and by, nature. We may want to deny this connection and try to believe we control the external world, but every time there’s a snowstorm or drought, we know our fate is tied to the world around us.  ~Alice Hoffman

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Things I’ve Seen

English plantain (Plantago lanceolata) pollen has been found in sites in Norway that date to the early Neolithic period, so it has been around for a very long time. It was introduced into North America from Europe and loves it here. It is a favorite of many butterflies, songbirds, and animals, and is pretty when it flowers like the one in the photo.

Last year I was walking through a forest clearing and almost stepped on a turtle. This year I did the same thing in almost the same spot and wondered if it was the same turtle. Last year it was spotless and looked as if it had come from the local Buff ‘N Shine and, as you can see in the photo, this one looked the same.

This snapping turtle was also very clean and I almost stepped on it as well. Luckily I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye. It was as big as a soccer ball.

 

I went to visit my favorite lone tree one day but the girls were heading to their favorite stream for a drink. For some reason my being there was spooking them away from the stream, so I left. The white around their noses is really striking.

My favorite lone tree was still there the next time I paid a visit. Since it’s in a fenced in pasture and I can’t get near it I’ve been wondering what it was for years. Finally, after scanning the leaves with binoculars, I can see that it is some type of hickory tree. There are a lot of shagbark hickories in this area so it might be one of those. Unfortunately I can’t see the bark well enough to know for sure.

Pendulous sedge (Carex pendula) is living up to its name. It is also called weeping sedge and grows along stream and pond banks. The slightest breeze gets the dangling flower heads swaying, so getting a decent photo of it can be a challenge. It took several tries to get one that didn’t show movement.

There is an unusual evergreen tree with deep green, very long needles growing in a local park and this photo is of some new needles emerging. They look like a bundle of optical fibers. I’ve tried to identify this tree several times with no luck.

The largest of these mushrooms was barely the size of a pea. The crisscrossing “sticks” are pine needles. I think they are Mycena osmundicola. I can’t seem to find a common name for them.

This small funnel shaped mushroom grew at the very end of a twig no bigger than a pencil. I think it is one of the Clitocybe group ofmushrooms.

I thought this was a spotted tussock moth but the helpful folks at Bugguide.net tell me that it’s a hickory tussock moth (Lophocampa caryae.) Its beautiful wings reminded me of stained glass.

This viceroy butterfly seemed very hairy and I’ve never noticed that before. It wouldn’t let me get closer to see a little better and flew off after one step. I’m also seeing a lot of swallow tails this year but I don’t think I’ve seen a monarch in 2 years now.

Just imagine something so small it can crawl between the upper and lower surfaces of a leaf and eat the tissues. That’s what made this path in this sarsaparilla leaf; a leaf mining insect called Phytomyza aralivora, according to Bugguide.net. By reading about these leaf trails I’ve learned that leaf miners are very specific about the leaf they chew, so a sarsaparilla leaf miner probably won’t mine an oak leaf. I’ve also learned that their trails start out thin but then become wider as the insect grows, and that can be seen in the above photo.

Our recent spate of heat and high humidity has brought on many coral fungi. I think this orangey pink one is crown coral (Clavicorona pyxidata.)This is the first one I’ve seen growing on a birch log.

 

I found this white growth on a native azalea recently. It was about the size of a golf ball, and hard and heavy. Azalea Exobasidium gall is a leaf and flower gall that is caused by a fungus instead of an insect. It can cause swollen shoots, stem galls, witches’ brooms and red leaf spots, but more often than not it causes white galls like that seen in the above photo. The white color comes from the spores of the fungus, which are spread by wind and rain.

This dragonfly decided to take a break from hunting and pose for a picture. I think it’s an immature male 12 spotted skimmer (Libellula pulchella,) but apparently immature males look much like females, so it could be a she. Since it doesn’t really matter to me I didn’t pursue the identification any further. Sometimes just enjoying something for what it is-for its beauty- can be more rewarding than finding out what makes it tick.

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful? ~Annie Dillard

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More Moving Things

I call these posts “moving things” so I don’t have to call them birds, insects, amphibians, and mammals or some other long, boring title. Since plants don’t move from place to place on their own accord “moving things” in this case means something other than plants. Long time readers know I don’t usually try to photograph these critters, but when they pose for me like these did I can’t resist.

I posted a photo of a Viceroy butterfly (Limenitis archippus) here not too long ago and mistakenly called it a monarch. Thanks to fellow blogger Mike Powell I learned that monarchs don’t have the black stripe seen here on the lower wing. I’ve seen quite a few viceroys this year but no monarchs.

 

A white admiral butterfly (Limenitis arthemis arthemis) landed on a maple tree to get some sun.  Every time I tried to get a photo of this one it closed its wings just before I clicked the shutter release. After doing that at least 10 times it finally let me get a shot with its wings open. Trying to guess what a butterfly is going to do next can be frustrating.

 

This red spotted purple butterfly ( Limenitis arthemis astyanax) landed on the damp sand in front of me as if to show me the differences between it and the white admiral in the previous photo. The white admiral and red spotted purple are essentially different forms of the same butterfly. I think the harsh sunlight made this one’s red spots almost disappear.

 

The water that this great blue heron was in was so covered with duckweed, pollen and / or algae that I didn’t see how he could see anything in it to catch. For as long as I watched him he didn’t move, so maybe there was a clear spot he was looking through.

 

This bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana) would have made a tasty snack for the heron, but he was in a much cleaner pond sitting on a rock. I just read that bullfrogs will eat just about anything that moves, including other bullfrogs.

 

Toads probably have better luck getting away from herons than frogs do. This one was out in the woods, away from any water. I’ve seen a lot of much smaller toads in the forest too. Like the bullfrog in the previous photo, this one was big enough so it would have been a handful if I’d picked it up. I think this is an American toad (Bufo americanus.) We only have one other in New Hampshire-Fowler’s toad.

 

This painted turtle (Chrysemys picta) seemed to be sniffing the air like a raccoon. I’m not sure what he was doing, but I wondered if he could smell me standing on the shore.

 

One foggy morning these two crows were perched where a great blue heron usually sits to wait for the sun on foggy mornings. Crows are smart birds and usually fly off if anyone points anything at them but these two sat still as I pointed my lens at them.  It’s hard to tell from the photos, but these were big birds. After reading Jerry’s latest post on his Quiet Solo Pursuits blog, I’m wondering if they weren’t ravens instead of crows. They didn’t make a sound while I was there, so I can’t tell by that. Their beaks are another way to identify them but they don’t show very well in this shot.

 

I’ve discovered that fritillary butterflies are very hard to identify, even for experts. This one could be a great spangled fritillary (Speyeria Cybele,) but to be honest I don’t know what it is, other than very beautiful. It was also quite big-bigger than a viceroy.

Here is another butterfly I can’t positively identify, but it might be an Appalachian Brown (Lethe appalachia.) It was on a goldenrod.

 

The milkweed tussock moth caterpillar (Euchaetes egle) gets chemicals from plants like milkweed and dogbane that protect the moth from being eaten by bats. The moth is also called the milkweed tiger moth. There was one black, white and yellow caterpillar on top of the leaf and another mirror image of it on the bottom of the leaf, but I didn’t get a shot of them both.

This hoverfly (Toxomerus geminatus) landed on the outer edge of this evening primrose blossom just as I was about to take a shot of it. As I watched, it crawled into the center so I took its picture instead of the blossom.

This song sparrow looked like someone had left it on the fluff cycle in a clothes dryer. I wonder if it’s a juvenile or an adult just having a bad day.

 

This song sparrow caught what I think is a grasshopper. Maybe it was going to feed it to the bird in the previous photo. It flew from tree to tree as if not wanting to show me what it was up to. I felt kind of guilty, realizing that I was keeping it from doing what it wanted to do, so I left it alone after a few quick photos.

I was at the Ashuelot River recently and this cedar waxwing kept flying from rock to rock, acting agitated. Every now and then it would fly toward me and then pull up and turn when just a few feet away. I wondered what it was trying to tell me and then I remembered that these birds eat fruit.  I just happened to be standing between it and a bush full of ripe silky dogwood berries, so I took a few photos and let him be.

Not to hurt our humble brethren is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough.  We have a higher mission — to be of service to them wherever they require it.  ~St. Francis of Assisi

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