September 04, 2013

Notes and Changes since last report

• It was 75°F, partly cloudy and calm at 1:30 PM on September 4, 2013.
• Yesterday ended a stretch of warm, humid weather punctuated with thunder showers.
• Some interesting insects today.
• Mosquitoes weren't even that bad in the Old Gravel Pit.

The Trails

• Skys were blue and the air was dry and cool over the front Old Hayfield.
• A praying mantis landed in the path not far in front of me.
• A number of eastern tailed-blues scampered at ankle height as I continued.
• On the Sedge Meadow Trail, a crane fly floated across coming to rest on a little branch.
• In the back of the back Old Hayfield, an immature bug was perched on the fruit of an ironwood.
• While retracing my steps on the Sedge Meadow Trail, I was surprised by a great spangled fritillary sitting in a tiny patch of sun.
• In the Old Pasture, a thread-legged bug landed next to the bench. Floating in the air, spread legged, with white joints, it made me think phantom crane fly when I first encountered one. A few seasons passed before I was able to follow one until it landed; it looked like a walking stick! The next time it happened, a passing visitor exclaimed wonder that walking sticks could fly. A little research turned up that indeed one species can... in Florida. Now it went from a simple ID challenge to a mystery. When one turned up at a porch light, I did too - with a jar. The turning point was when it ignored its standard pet food, lettuce, and I realized it had piercing/sucking, not chewing mouth parts - and raptorial forelegs, like a praying mantis: this was no vegetarian! I turned my inqueries to the true bugs and lo and behold, we finally had a match: the short-winged thread-legged bug - its genus being in the assassin bug family.
• Across from the bench, a not the regular garden spider was tending its web.
• A large, green grasshopper crash landed and became invisible in the path.
• I knew there had to be an American copper around, and when it finally showed up I could move on.
• As the path headed into the woods for the creek, a caterpillar, illuminated by a beam of sun, dangled on a silk thread, rolling it into a ball to winch itself back up into its tree.
• Farther along the path a white wood aster was nicely lit up.
• Towards the end of the Cary Pines Trail, a barberry geometer let me get just a couple shots.
• In the Fern Glen was a hillside of ragweed. The pollen from its tiny male flowers is considered the main cause of hay fever.
• The view of ostrich fern across the pond was striking.
• From the boardwalk across the fen, turtlehead could be seen on both sides.
• Arrow-leaved tearthumb was blooming, too.
• Swamp milkweed had finished blooming and was now forming seed pods.
• Boneset had been blooming since July and looked like it would continue for a while.
• It's always a little hard to tell if beggar-ticks are coming or going - their ray flowers - "petals" are usually insignificant.
• Mixed in with that was Bur-marigold, a more convincing flower in the same genus.
• Only one of the saddleback caterpillars could be found today. It was fat.
• In the Old Gravel Pit, fall webworm had a nest in honeysuckle.
• As I neared the Carriage House on the Scotch Pine Alleé, something flew across my path. Large as a fritillary, but brown and erratic as a hackberry, it had my attention... It landed on a tree... It was one of the catocala underwing moths. They hide well against tree bark, but in the gap between its folded forewings was the slightest hint of smouldering ember that is the orange hind wing that gives the group their name. Wary and fast, they explode into flight when disturbed with a startling display of the hind wings. It would only let me get just so close. And when I tried to follow it, even less close.
• But my dinner was close so I was gone, too.