Wild Wednesday ~ Damsels and Dragons

Naturalists are, by definition, generalists, but many, if not most, have a particular area of interest about which they are most knowledgeable—birds or flowers or rocks or moss or trees. Et cetera.

Powdered dancer (Agria moesta) and Variable dancer (Agria fumipennis)

Me? I know a little about a lot of things, nothing about some things, and a lot about nothing. Birds, I'm decent at, wildflowers, trees. But I don't really have that one thing. That one area of expertise. That passion.

Pond damsel spp?

As a result, since becoming a Maine Master Naturalist, a requirement of which is to share naturalist knowledge with others, I've taught classes in nature writing and nature journaling, my area of "expertise" and a naturalist skill that can be applied to whatever interest a person has.

Ebony jewelwing (Calopteryx maculata)

That being said, one realm I've been dabbling in for many years, and which is the thing that will be my "thing" once I take the time to really get to know it, is the Odonata—dragonfly and damselfly family.

Dragonhunter (Hagenius brevistylus)

Because they're just so darn cool.

There are 158 species of odonates in Maine alone, and some can only be identified under the so it might take me a while, but half the fun is in the chase.

Wild Wednesday ~ Small Wonders

There is so much going on in the natural world this time of year it's hard to take it all in. Birds! Flowers! Frogs! Bugs! I don't even know where to begin. Here's a smattering of small phenomena I came across the other morning. I stepped out on the front step and saw the dismembered remains of a June bug. Who perched on my porch and snacked on this beetle? My extensive research (googling "what eats june bugs?") turned up a lot of critters that dine on the grubs, but no mention of beetle-eaters. Any ideas?

The bluets (Houstonia caerulea) are still flowering here and there on the lawn. These are one of the first wildflowers to come out in spring and it's nice to see them still going strong (reigns in that "summer's going by too fast" sensation a bit).

E left his flip-flops in the driveway after we got home from camping and this nursery web spider (Pisaurina mira) thought the bottom of one was a dandy place to sun itself.

I've seen a few dragonflies here and there (more every day), but I've been stuck in bird mode—not yet in odonata mode. Time to dig out the net and the field guides and refresh my id skills. A few very cooperative specimens stopped to pose for a picture. This one I think is a stream cruiser (Didymops transversa).

I'm thinking this one is a lancet clubtail (Gomphus exilis).

And this one I'm pretty sure is delta-spotted spiketail (Cordulegaster diastatops).

And finally, Z discovered a robin's nest tucked in the kiwi vine that grows over our deck rail. Mama robin wasn't home when I poked my camera in to snap a shot, and I hope she returned soon after. It will be fun to witness little robins grow up right outside our back door.

What small wonders have you been noticing lately?

Love Bugs

I have an essay about dead bugs and affection up at Mothers Always Write today. Please check it out!

Wild Wednesday ~ Early September

Despite our relatively dry weather (not counting last night's deluge), there's a lot of mushroom fruiting going on out there.


I'm not even going to try to pretend to i.d. them, though.

I took a mushroom class a couple of years ago, but it would take a lot more than an evening lecture to learn this complex kingdom.

For now, I'll just appreciate their interesting colors and shapes.

I don't have a lot of interesting new flowers to share with you today, but I saw this guy growing in our dry river bed and thought it might be a hemlock of some time, but it turns out it's water parsnip (Sium suave).

Also near the river I found this:

A rodent skeleton of some kind, almost completely cleaned and desiccated. I'm not sure what it is--too big for a mouse or vole. Maybe a chipmunk or flying squirrel? It's tail wasn't bushy, but most of the hair was gone from the rest of its body as well. It looked like its spine had been severed, but i wonder what (large animal) would have eaten it, picking its bones so clean but leaving it intact. Maybe it fell from a tree. If I was a real naturalist, I would have brought it home for a specimen, but I left it where I found it.

Meanwhile, the insects are very busy, including great big darner dragonflies that course over the fields in the early evening, and this more diminutive, and sedate, meadowhawk.

I walked through our back field last week, and it was literally humming with activity--bees, flies, grasshoppers, wasps, cicadas, all singing their busy, end of summer songs.

It occurred to me that someone with a bee phobia might freak out a little, walking among such buzzing,

But I didn't bother the bees, and they didn't bother me.

I mostly just felt happy about all the good pollinating going on around me, and the health and well-being of so many wild pollinators here in my corner of the world.

I also spied this caterpillar on an aster stem. Z got me a caterpillar field guide for my birthday and this was my first chance to use it. Fortunately, this guy had some very distinctive markings and I quickly found that it was a brown-hooded owlet (Cucullia convexipennis), which grows into a much less interesting-looking moth.

Finally, frogs have been on the move, hopping out of the way of my feet as I walk in the woods, or along the river and pond. But this pickerel frog (Lithobates palustris) sat nice and still for me to snap its photo and I finally sat down to learn the difference between it and the northern leopard frog (Lithobates pipiens).

The leopard frog is usually green (though it has a brown phase), while the pickerel is coppery brown. The leopard's spots are more rounded while the pickerel's are more square and arranged in two neat rows down the back (as you can see below), while the leopard's are more randomly arranged. Finally, the ace in the hole is that the pickerel has bright orange-yellow coloring under its hind legs. I didn't pick this one up to check, but based on the other characteristics, I'm going with pickerel.

What's wild in your neck of the woods this week?

Growing a Butterfly

A few weeks ago, Z and I found a whole bunch of these caterpillars all over one of our fields.

We took two of them home, along with a handful of their host plants (asters, I believe) and set them up in our usual butterfly sprouting jar. I was skeptical that they would make it; they didn't seem to eat and grow with the voracity of monarch caterpillars, and the chrysalis of one fell off the side of the jar (also, they left behind a fuzzy bit of tail when they made their chrysalises, which I found mildly disturbling).

But, sure enough, a couple of weeks later, the first butterfly emerged. 

Another week went by, and the second came out as well, fallen chrysalis and all.

It took me a while to find the time to look the species up, but I've finally puzzled out that our butterflies were Harris's checkerspots (Chlosyne harissii).

Now that I know we can successfully raise other butterflies, besides monarchs, I'm going to be on the lookout for more caterpillars (though not tomato hornworms--we tried those last year and they made our whole sun room stink like a feedlot). E already has a tent caterpillar in a yogurt container, which appears to have spun itself a bed of white candy floss, and has settled in for a good long sleep. I wonder what will come out the other end?