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Flower Fiends
Bumble/Tiger Swallowtail.A true bug, meaning an insect that sucks its food, and an unknown bee. Another bee I can’t identify.Don’t forget the butterflies, fools for flowers, too. One of the sulphurs, I’ve never been able to distinguish them.Whoa, Nelly! Look at the patterning on this Oblique Streaktail (Allograpta obliqua)! Going to work on getting a…
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Genus Ardea
Two juvenile Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias) and a Great Egret (Ardea alba) were hanging out at the same “water” in Green-Wood recently. Ardea is Latin for heron, herodias is Greek for heron. Alba is white. The egret was scarfing down small fry with abandon. Never saw either of the herons make a strike. (“Heron”…
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Underland
The Old English word unweder means bad, bad weather, a storm or tempest “so extreme that it seems to have come from another climate or time altogether” writes Robert MacFarlane in Underland. Exploring the rapidly shrinking ice of Greenland near the end of his new “deep time journey,” he’s in the thick of this uncanny…
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Same Oak, Different Gall
Looking a bit like mushrooms, these galls on the leaves of this white oak in Green-Wood are the results of yet another Cynipidae gall wasp, Phylloteras poculum. Mine was the third iNaturalist report of this species. I tracked the species down on bugguide.net. Bugguide.net doesn’t have an image of the actual (tiny) wasp. So this…
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Galls of It All
So it seems we still aren’t quite sure how galls are created. Something irritates a plant; the plant responds by creating a unique growth. The hundreds of species of tiny gall wasps are the best known gall-forcers, but other insects (aphids, mites, others) and some microbial forms do it, too. But let’s stick with the…
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Of Whales and Melville
Herman Melvill was born on this day two hundred years ago on the narrow southern tip of Manhattan. The family added an “e” to the name later. In the grand “Grand Armada” chapter of Moby Dick, which moves from slaughter to tranquility to frenzy, he writes “there is no folly of the beasts of the…
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How Now, Cowbird?
A late season chick. But what species?Here comes a parent… oh-oh. Chipping Sparrow.And Brown-headed Cowbird. Brown-headed Cowbirds are brood parasites. They lay their eggs in the nests of other species. The hatchling may kill off the hosts’ own offspring. I’ve never seen this in action. BHC’s lay their eggs “in 220 species of birds. Recent…
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Butterfly Madness Continued
Red-banded Hairstreak. This generally has a more southeastern range from the Carolinas down. They obviously can get further north, and presumably, as our temperature gets more southern, we’ll see them more often. Pearl Crescent. Another specimen with very frazzled wings.Common Sootywing.Eastern Tailed-blue.A rather more worn Eastern Tailed-blue. Female, I think. Small, rapid fliers, flashing blue…
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Butterfly Madness
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail. The hugeness of these is really telling when they’re at eye-level. Wingspan can reach 4.5″.Monarch.Black Swallowtails.Sulphurs courting.American Lady. Oops! This is a Painted Lady. I’m so used to seeing American Ladies, I didn’t even look closely at this photo. Thanks to Ken for pointing out the mis-identification.Common Buckeye pair.Red Admiral, very beat…
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RSP
Red-spotted Purple. Limenitis arthemis “in part” because the White Admiral of further north is considered the same species. They intergrade in-between ranges, and perhaps the ones seen locally are a little mixed? The formal binomial for the RSP is Limenitis arthemis astyanax (Fabricius)*.This beauty is rarely seen here. Its larval stage caterpillar is a bird-poop…
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Backyard and Beyond 