June 26, 2013

Notes and Changes since last report

• It was 75°F, overcast and calm at 1:00 PM on June 26, 2013.
• Banded hairstreak, great spangled fritillary and little glassywing were back.
• Fruits were ripening.
• In spite of some sprinkles, it was a good butterfly day.

The Trails

• The Gifford House milkweed promised to be blooming well and attracting early summer butterflies this week. The first rain drops fell as I arrived...
• No butterflies, but a "regular fly" was there, calm enough to allow another portrait.
• Not quite so calm was a wild turkey hen. She, a bunch of chicks and another hen scooted away in the tall grass at the side of the first Old Hayfield.
• Wild basil was blooming along the edge.
• A milkweed relative, spreading dogbane was blooming in places.
• Its sap is milky and the leaf is similar in shape if not size.
• One nice thing about cloudy days is that skippers, like this little glassywing, alternate between feeding with wings up and sunning with wings down.
• A spot of color caused a detour in my path. It was a rose, but not the ordinary multiflora rose, rather one I'll have to come back to visit with the book.
• Right next to it was an interesting spider web. And now I see that it was inhabited.
• Great spangled fritillaries were back, and even on this gray day I would see over a dozen.
• As I stood up a flutter in the tops of the nearby weeds was not a field sparrow but a kingbird - nice!
• On the Sedge Meadow Trail, a spring azure took a break from ovapositing on gray dogwood to take nectar from the same.
• Honeysuckle berries were profuse and ripening.
• The alien Deptford pink was scattered along the side of the trail.
• The bench in the back Old Hayfield was popular with the dragonflies.
• It was a male and female common whitetail.
• In the back of the field, that tall, whispy loblia was up and blooming.
• No white center in the flower and a regular sort of leaf... it must be spiked lobelia.
• Ooo! A small battered skipper! Was this a 2nd chance at the one that got away a couple weeks ago? Unfortunately that's the best of 4 photos. And it looks more like a cobweb than the Indian I thought it would be. Oh well.
• Sitting on the bench, hoping for more skippers in the Old Pasture, I felt something on my leg. It wasn't a tick but the tiniest caterpiller imaginable - so tiny it was scaling the hairs on the back of my hand like trees to get a better view of its location.
• On the way down from the bluff of the Wappinger Creek trail, banded hairstreaks finally made an appearance, but not one I could capture; they were landing just a little too high. Then I noticed movement above them; it was a red-spotted purple even higher, almost in the tree tops. And something was disturbing it: more hairstreaks. I'd never seen them that high before.
• I knew another spot where you could look down on them, but it was empty... I went down for a more thorough look. Nothing... except for narrow-leaved bittercress - an unbelievably prolific invasive. As I reached for the 3rd victim, I stopped and stared at my hand in amazement. I'd very carefully reached around the nettles, but the flame across my thumb was going off the scale. A small bumble bee-like thing came by, perhaps to see if I had gotten the message. Repetition was not necessary. I did notice over my shoulder as I fled, a gray paper ball in the weeds. Interesting - no yellow, not yellow jackets, too small for bald-faced hornets... maybe another time.
• Farther along was a more pleasant surprise - an ebony jewelwing that sat still for me. And then a female, too.
• Out along the Cary Pines Trail, in the crotch of a tree was miniature landscape with mountain slopes of bark and alpine meadows of moss.
• Back on our local trails, Canada mayflower was forming berries.
• I'd forgotten to check the trumpet creeper last week. Funny, it looks more like a tree than a vine. And these little barbs could mean this is prickley ash! This is something that giant swallowtails use for baby food up here in the North!
• In the Fern Glen, lizard's tail would soon be blooming.
• In the background was a damselfly dining on perhaps a fruitfly.
• I remembered to look behind the Carriage House today and was surprised at the payoff: Stewartia was blooming.
• Its "exfoliating" bark resembles that of sycamore and it has a striking flower.
• One last pass around Gifford's milkweeds was productive with more great spangleds and (finally) a banded hairstreak.