On Golden Rod

On Saturday I took a butterfly walk in the Flat River Impoundments. The butterflies were in huge numbers, yet less species than previously seen. I estimated seeing 750+ Common Buckeyes and 750+ Pearl Crescents just to give you an idea.

Back to Goldenrod it was covered in mostly buckeyes and I had many opportunities to get some butterfly photos for the blog, do we have enough of them here yet?

This male Monarch really gave me a nice angle! I have hundreds of Monarch photos, this one stands out a little. See the black dot on the rear wing, that is the male scent patch.

Here is a fresh fall form Question Mark, Polygonia interrogationis These butterflies have two forms summer (black) and fall form (orange). You can tell the Question Mark from the Eastern Comma by the 4 spots on the center of the forewing, Eastern Comma has 3 spots. Best to check my link above too!

Here is the Common Buckeye. Lots of places in the eastern US is having a boom year for them. Around here they have been seen in big numbers for 2 months at least. To be honest it was difficult just choosing 2 photos of buckeyes as I took lots of photos of them posing at will everywhere on the goldenrod.

This time of year if your lucky and look at every buckeye you can, chances are you might find a 'rosa" form Common Buckeye which is all red on the underside. So far this year I have seen one 'rosa' in the yard and another in the field. Look at the bottom of this page to see a 'rosa' form buckeye.

 Here is an Variegated Fritillary, Euptoieta claudia, I estimated seeing over 75 of these on my stroll in the impoundments! Not easy to get a photo of as they are usually very fast moving.

 Above is the Viceroy and below is a close relative the Red-spotted Purple. I might have seen more Viceroys than I'd ever seen before, estimated seeing 75+! Red-spotted Purples are winding down, they come out earlier than Viceroys.

Sulphurs puddling

One the left is a Sleepy Orange, the second and forth ones are Orange Sulphurs and the third one is the Cloudless Sulphur. All of these butterflies are males, males get minerals from the sand to aid in reproduction. Puddling was a big event on my walk, several places I found 50 or more Pearl Crescents and lots of Common Checkered Skippers. All of the species shown above were puddling one place or the other usually in smaller numbers.

This Monarch was taken on Sunday. I knew Brian was leading a Monarch Tagging session along the tracks near Falls Lake, I kind of dropped in on them. They tagged two monarchs while I was hanging out with them. That flower is Groundseltree, Eastern Baccharis a huge shrub that can get to 10 foot tall in about 20 years it is a native shrub here. This one was blooming a tad early, it had 5 Monarchs, 3 Viceroys, 2 Red-spotted Purples and 8-10 Common Buckeyes on it, none were going anywhere they were 'glued' to it. I took this photo with my G11 camera with the flash turned on for fill from a steep gravely slope with the camera held up as far as I could reach with it, using the flexible view finder screen bent down to see my photo. Also I walked the RR tracks nearly 2 miles to get this photo.

Groundseltree, Eastern Baccharis (Baccharis halimifolia) has male and female plants, the male plants attract the butterflies. I have found that the flowers only attach butterflies for just a few days when they are yellow like in the photo above.

That is Brian just after netting a Monarch! Notice all the goldenrod!

Getting the Monarch ready to tag.

Here is it NPG 431 be looking for it south of North Carolina! Both Monarchs they caught were very fresh. Between Saturday and Sunday I saw something like 36 Monarchs and only 2 were beat up, the rest just as fresh as this one. Both days I was able to watch the sky and see a single Monarch floating far overhead, one of the coolest things in my memory. I have seen hundreds floating over head, to be honest seeing just one is just as good as seeing hundreds when they just drift by unknowingly to most people.

One last thing to tell you about I observed for the first time spiders ballooning high up in the sky on Saturday. The silken webs twisted and floated along in the breeze. They looked like tiny lightning bolts in the sun light. I also saw one web leave the field for the sky, that confirmed what they were. It is believed that spiders balloon to disperse to new hunting grounds.I did not see the tiny spiders only the webs...

Monarchs on the way, Sea of Sunflowers

Today I went on a local field trip to the Flat River Impoundments just outside of Durham. The day was gorgeous! I expected to see a lot of Monarchs, but instead we saw something like 40 Viceroys the butterfly that mimics the Monarch. Finally we found 3 Monarch caterpillars on milkweed that had only stems and pods left no leaves anywhere.

Tickseed Sunflower (Bidens) everywhere and they are native plants too!!!
We have a handful of them around our pond. Once blooming is past the tickseeds will cling to your clothing with the two hooks on the seeds.

One 5 foot wide plant in the rip rap rocks.

Just one of many fields full of Tickseed Sunflowers. The impoundments are somewhat wet and the sunflowers seem to do very well here. The aroma is nice, though I can't explain it.

Durham Butterfly Count

Folks,

Last Sunday Meg and I helped with the 11th annual Durham Butterfly Count. I have helped on this count 9 out of the past 11 years if I recall correctly. We covered the Little River Impoundment, Penny's Bend Nature Preserve, High Field and our gardens. Not many of the group leaders visited gardens as normally the best place to find butterflies is in wild places with native flowers in bloom. Sara P Duke Gardens was covered due to the large masses of butterfly friendly flowers there.

Meg and I ended up finding 45 species of butterflies which is pretty good. The entire collective effort of the butterfly count tallied 58 species. Each group usually finds something the others don't find, ours was a fresh Painted Lady.

I talked the Will in the morning and his group had already found a Mourning Cloak, Nymphalis antiopa which is never found in our area in July or August as they are aestivating until it gets cooler. Anyway an hour later Meg found the above Mourning Cloak along the edge of the woods and it posed for several photos. So Mourning Cloak is now added to the count list.


This small frog gave me a small fit as its markings didn't match anything I have seen in the area. Experts tell me it is an immature Southern Leopard Frog. Usaully they are green with lots of spots.

Meg found this little red dragonfly in the shady woods. This is a Blue-faced Meadowhawk, Sympetrum ambiguum. These are a fall season dragonfly and it was several weeks early if you ask me.

This Mocha Emerald, Somatochlora linearis was found cruising a forested trail, and landed especially for me to take photos. These tend to fly with out landing so getting a photo is fairly good.

Halloween Pennant, Celithemis eponina we saw lots of these in one meadow we walked in.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail from our garden, not very many of these were found this year. The only butterfly we found only in our garden during the count was Hoary Edge and we found three of them.

Monarch, Danaus plexippus nectaring on Butterflyweed. meg found this one as I'm colored blind and missed seeing the ornage flowers. I would have seen the movement.

This female Monarch is laying eggs on Common Milkweed that had been mowed down and was growing back, good for her!
Some day I'll post some photos I took in 2004 during the 3 months I observed them on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Oh WOW!

Cloudless Sulphur, Phoebis sennae These butterflies can be seen moving northward in large numbers on the eastern coast in a few weeks. This one was just resting. I've always believed that the Cloudless Sulphur was the butterfly where the name "butter" fly came from, it looks just like a pat of butter in flight.