Butterfly count during National Moth Week

 I had intended to get this post featuring my efforts for the Rondeau butterfly count out a few days ago. 

Really. 

But alas, many other things happened, not the least of which was processing well over 1000 images of moths taken over the last little while, including those during this past National Moth Week.

The Rondeau butterfly count was held on July 18. It was supposed to be the week before, but the weather had something to do with it. Sunny conditions are much more appealing to butterfly activity than rain, so the 18th it was.

My territory isn't some of the most productive habitat, but someone has to do it. I started off in the Erieau area, covering the McGeachy Pond trail as well as the Rail Trail. Butterfly diversity wasn't plentiful, but maybe it was too early in the day. Others described the slowness of activity before 10, and that was certainly what I experienced. Nonetheless, I did what I could to not only see butterflies but hopefully get a few photos. Certainly some of the most popular nectaring plants were past their best. I did manage to get about 8 species of butterfly here.

Certainly there was no shortage of Cabbage Whites, and this first photo shows the way one normally sees them once they have stopped fluttering.

On occasion you can catch them with their wings open.

There were a few Eastern Commas.....

...but only a single Red Admiral.

Summer Azures were not plentiful either at least along these two trails.

The day before I had been at Rondeau, and probably saw at least 100 of these Summer Azures along one trail. The difference was that at Rondeau, there are more coyotes, who don't pick up after themselves, leaving their digested food remains out in plain view and available for things like certain butterflies.

There were at least three of such coyote discards, with as many as 20 or more azures vying for a place at this dining spot.

Maybe if people out walking their dogs along the Erieau trails were not so responsible at picking up after their canine pets, I would have seen more of these azures. Just kidding, of course, and there is no certainty that the dog food remains would be as appealing to butterflies as the menu that coyotes feed on.

 This American Toad was resting on one of the boardwalks going out into the marsh.

 When there weren't many butterflies to focus on, there were a few birds. Nothing out of the ordinary, but there were the usual Yellow Warblers.....

....and Singing, er Song, Sparrows.

I next met up with Keith and Steve to check out an old field type habitat closer to Blenheim. It is getting more grown in, so it isn't as productive as it has been in years past. It was a good spot to find Common Wood-Nymphs, which although they were plentiful and easy to document when in flight, typically drop down in the vegetation and make it difficult to see let alone get a photo.

Next stop for me was along the Fargo Road railway tracks, where there is a wide vegetated area for several kilometres, some of which was adjacent to the only wooded area in my territory. There were a few more butterflies, including Monarchs, which were usually found at each site I checked out.

I got a single Question Mark.....

....and a tattered hairstreak, which I concluded was a Banded Hairstreak.

With the abundance of flowering plants attracting pollinators, such as Spotted Knapweed and milkweed species, I had a few moths to check out. Okay, they aren't butterflies but since it was National Moth Week, I thought I could include these attractive moths that upon a casual glance actually look like a small hummingbird. Hence these are known as the Hummingbird Clearwing, a member of the Sphinx moth group.

A Wild Turkey was out patrolling the tracks when I got there, but decided to disappear into the nearby wooded area before I could get a closer photo.

I did a few other spots, including the B-Fit trail on the south side of Blenheim. There are lots, and I mean lots, of Swamp Milkweed. Probably over 1000 plants in one of the pondwater storm cells that the trail goes around. I was hoping for a deluge of butterflies, but other than Monarchs, there wasn't anything else that I could see.

In a few places were some Swamp Rose Mallow, but only one was in flower. It is a species at risk in Ontario.

At one of the residences adjacent to the trail was a colourful garden full of plants that pollinators love. I saw Monarchs and a couple of Summer Azures, but that was about all. One plant stood out as unusual. It is Queen-of-the-prairie, a tallgrass prairie species but not native to Ontario. It is more common in the mid-west.

The Blenheim Sewage Lagoons were also on my list of places to check out. Unfortunately a lot of the usually best areas had been recently mowed, so there wasn't much to look at. I did see a few ducks, including Ruddy Ducks. Even though they are normally a mid-western species, there always seem to be a few hanging out here throughout the breeding season.

In one section of the hayfield which was cut and baled a few weeks ago, there was a good crop of trefoil and clover. I got my only two Black Swallowtail butterflies here.

Northern Crescents were not abundant anywhere, but I saw a few.

I also checked out the grassy fields along the north side of Blenheim. The wildflowers that were so abundant in the past are largely gone, so it is mostly grasses. Other than Monarchs, there were no butterflies to be seen, but I did note a couple of Bobolinks lingering.

All in all, it was a fairly typical count for my area. Maybe slightly fewer species, but the wet weather just prior to the count, and a slightly later date, might have made a difference. 

Additional note: Please be advised that if you are a subscriber to this blog, the blog site has indicated that sometime after July it will no longer be providing automatic email notices of when this blog is published. I will try and get a subscriber's list assembled and let you know, but in the meantime, if you would like to be advised of the publication of future posts of Nature Nuggets, let me know via this email: prairietramper@gmail.com.

The blog post appears to still have the email subscription function. The blog feeder has just indicated that it will discontinue after July.

Some recent highlights of Newport Forest

 Newport Forest is ~45 ha (110 ac) along the south side of the Thames River, a bit downstream from Wardsville. It was always a mix of farmland and forest in its post-settlement days, with several creek systems meandering through on their way to the Thames. In 2000, it was on the market and Kee Dewdney and his wife Pat, acquired it for the purpose of retaining and restoring it closer to its natural environment. One of their goals was to document every living thing that could be found on the property and, with the help of others, have an amazing list of organisms.

A few years ago Kee and Pat transferred the title to the Thames Talbot Land Trust. The documentation of species and the overall management of this site continues. It is a private site with access only by permission. If you are interested in knowing more about the human and natural history of this site, as well as the Thames Talbot Land Trust, check out this link.

One of the things that highlights this site in spring is the impressive display of Virginia Bluebells. I have been there on several occasions to see the bluebells, and had featured this in an earlier blog post which you can check out here. 

 

I was invited there again this past July 4, but not to enjoy the bluebells. They were finished for the season weeks ago. The purpose this time was to document as many moth species as I could attract to my sheet. This would be the fifth time beginning in 2018 where I had set up one or more sheets in order to sample the moths. Since this coming week, from July 17-25, is National Moth Week, I thought it opportunistic to feature (mostly) some of the diversity of moths that I photographed that evening. With the breeding bird season winding down, although I really liked the image of the Acadian Flycatcher at the head of my blog for the past few weeks, I decided to change it to a very distinctive moth, the Spiny Oak-slug Moth, photographed at Newport.

The lights were on two different sheets, a few dozen metres apart and facing different directions. Due to the time of year, it wasn't really dark enough to put them on to any great effect until about 9:45 p.m. We had them on until about 12:15 a.m. Weather conditions are always a factor, and indeed we had to postpone our original night of a couple of weeks earlier due to the uncertain, and less than ideal, weather forecast. But on this night it was about as good as it can get: the temperature ranged from about 21-25C, there was high humidity and no wind. On top of that, there were no mosquitoes!

At the outset there were 6 of us to enjoy the show, but some had to leave a bit earlier than others, so they missed two of the larger moth highlights that came later to the party.

And so on with the show! In the ~2.5 hours that the lights were on, I managed to photograph over 100 species of moths. Given how fast and furious they were coming in at times, not to mention the fact that many are very small and could get easily missed with all the moth action, I strongly believe that there were likely a couple of dozen more that came and were not photographed. However, here are some of the most colourful or distinctive ones. They vary considerably in size, and you may be able to get a relative size of each of them based on the size of the weave of the sheet. Click on any photo to see it a bit larger.

Abbreviated Button Slug

American Lappet Moth

Aproned Cenopis

This next one is always a favourite to see. It gets its name, Banded Tussock Moth, due to the jagged bands going across its wings, as well as the shorter turquoise and pale yellow bands just behind its head.

Beautiful Sparganothis

There aren't any bogs nearby, but this next one is named the Bog Lygrophia.

Canadian Petrophila

An aquatic type of Crambid moth, this next one is the Chestnut-marked Pondweed Moth

Confused Eusarca

This next one is quite tiny. It is the Cream-edged Dichomeris.

Delicate Cycnia

Some don't have a widely known common name, as is the case for this next one. It just goes by its scientific name: Dichomeris ventrellus.

When you are walking through the grass and a small moth appears, flutters away and disappears beneath a blade of grass, it is likely a member of the Grass-veneer group. This next one is the Double-banded Grass-veneer.

Feeble Grass Moth

Forest Tent Caterpillar

Green Leuconycta

One of the highlights for any moth-er is to encounter one of the Underwing group, which often have brightly coloured hind wings that really get your attention when they are in flight. This next one is a Hawthorn Underwing, giving a glimpse of its orange and black hind, or under, wing.

Hickory Stem Borer

Identifying moths can be enormously challenging, even when there is a good field guide available. The colours and patterns are based on the tiny scales on the wings, which show wear and tear all too soon. And some species, like this next one, normally has quite a variety of colours and patterns even when it is fresh. These next three images are all of the same species, known as the Large Lace-border Moth,

At times there was quite a conglomeration of moths on the sheets, even in close proximity to each other. This next photo shows one example, and includes four of the species already featured above. Can you name them all?

Large Maple Spanworm

Lesser Maple Spanworm

Lobed Plume Moth

Mint-loving Pyrausta

This next one is extremely tiny, at  merely 4-5 mm. In fact if it hadn't been for the dark patch in the middle of its closed wings, I could easily have missed it altogether on the white sheet. It is a member of the White Eye-capped Moth group. I haven not been able to come up with a species name yet.

Pink-barred Pseudeustrotia

Red-fringed Emerald

Just before midnight, when the last two of our original group of six were thinking about packing it in, this large silk moth came fluttering in. It refused to land on the sheet, but kept fluttering along the ground, even bumping into us and then disappearing for a few moments. I got one quick shot when it lay on the ground for a couple of seconds.

Eventually it returned and decided to hang up under one of the wooden benches close by. It is a Polyphemus Moth, with an open wingspan of 100-150 mm.

Over my mothing time, I have photographed about 700 species. But considering there are over 3300 species in Ontario, there is a strong likelihood of finding a new one on any given outing, and this next one is an example of that. It is called the Sharp-lined Yellow.

Straight-lined Plagodis

The moths don't always come to the sheet. Sometimes they alight on something nearby, such as the Polyphemus Moth did. Or in the case of this next one, it landed at the edge of the wheel-well of my vehicle.

The Saw-wing

Three-patched Bigwing

Names are quite intriguing, but not surprising since there are over 3300 species in Ontario alone, and believed to be over 160,000 species in the world. It must be hard to come up with meaningful names at times. I'm not sure what this next one did to deserve its name, the 'Ugly-nest Caterpillar Moth'.

Walnut Caterpillar

Just as we were packing up things, this next moth came to one of the sheets. Like the Polyphemus Moth, it fluttered and bounced around, getting caught in the grass at times, but we waited it out. It eventually came to rest on the sheet, so naturally we were able to get some photos. This is a Walnut Sphinx.

There are lots of critters that come to the lights besides moths, but moths were our main focus. However here are a couple of other things that caught our attention. This first one is a member of the Tabanid group, those biting deer flies that can be so annoying on hot sunny days. This one was content just to rest on the sheet....

...as was this large Reddish-brown Stag Beetle. It arrived shortly after we put the lights on, and remained for the entire time. In fact it was hard to get it to release its grip when we took the sheet down, but it was better left at Newport rather than taking it home.

We hope to have another moth night, perhaps in August at a time which we have not sampled before.

Additional note: Please be advised that if you are a subscriber to this blog, the blog site has indicated that sometime after July it will no longer be providing automatic email notices of when this blog is published. I will try and get a subscriber's list assembled and let you know, but in the meantime, if you would like to be advised of the publication of future posts of Nature Nuggets, let me know via this email: prairietramper@gmail.com.

The blog post appears to still have the email subscription function. The blog feeder has just indicated that it will discontinue after July.