July 16, 2014

Notes and Changes since last report

• It was 75°F, partly cloudy and calm at 2:30 PM on July 16, 2014.
• Several days of heavy rain showers ended this morning making for a late start.
• And a meeting made for a rushed end of the walk.
• The Wappinger Creek was full of water and the fields were full of butterflies.

The Trails

• A red-spotted purple was going from leaf to leaf on the milkweed at Gifford House.
• It was licking the se- (or ex-) cretions of the abundant milkweed aphids.
• On the dirt drive to the Carriage House, a dun skipper was licking stones that it moistened with its own um... bodily fluids.
• In the first Old Hayfield, a yellow-collared scape moth was barely revealing its metalic blue body.
• There was no missing the metalic green of the dogbane beetles.
• Wild bergamot was beginning to bloom. As a butterfly magnet, it picks up as common milkweed wanes.
• On the Sedge Meadow Trail, a scarlet tanager played hide-and-seek with me for a while.
• An eastern towhee was not so shy.
• Some cedar waxwings joined the towhee for a bit.
• Way across the Sedge Meadow, I could see a butterfly confrontation at the edge of the wood.
• It looked like northern pearly-eye behaviour.
• The back Old Hayfield was lively with both dogbanes and common milkweed attracting a host of butterflies, especially today, the three "witches&quot, of which the dun skipper is one.
• The common wood-nymph was out in great numbers.
• Once they get a taste for human, they can be hard to shake.
• Almost under foot was a handsome dragonfly - I'll stick my neck out and suggest female eastern pondhawk.
• Ah, finally! A decent shot of a coral hairstreak. And there were several to choose from.
• Resting on the bench in the Old Pasture, I saw a familiar spiral blur above some sunny leaves: a banded hairstreak that had perhaps had a close encounter with a bird-kind.
• The Wappinger Creek was roaring from upstream to downstream.
• Near the Appendix, a family of common mergansers was dealing with swift current and many bugs in the air.
• The Creek surged past the Appendix and I went into the quiet of the Cary Pines Trail.
• Coming out at the Fern Glen, I found freshly flowering thistle with a pair of seemingly lost beetles on last year's grass head next to it.
• In from the stone bridge, spotted wintergreen was blooming. I always wonder why it's not "striped wintergreen"
• With the parking lot in sight, I paused to snap a large-ish bird at the top of tree by the front Old Hayfield - an eastern kingbird.
• And I still had 10 minutes to be late for the meeting.