Shorebirds, Orchids and Leps

This is post #600 of my blog: Nature Nuggets.  Little did I know at the time back in early 2014, how this would unfold. Thanks to many readers, I find doing this highly satisfying.

 It is a great time to be out exploring, with camera in hand, of course.

The local sewage lagoons have been productive, especially for shorebirds, although things have tapered off in the last 3 days or so. But there has been a good variety continuing to show, such as the following:

American Avocet

Baird's Sandpiper

Typically lots of this next one, a Lesser Yellowlegs....

....and always at least a few Pectoral Sandpipers.

Short-billed Dowitcher

A highlight for at least a couple of days, was this young Willet, a species that breeds a fair way to the west of us here.

Not a shorebird, obviously, but a hunter of shorebirds. From one to three Peregrine Falcons have been seen swooping and diving after shorebirds. This young Peregrine one was a fair distance away, but hovered briefly, allowing me to get this shot.

At Rondeau, there are lots of birds moving through, although they are hard to photograph with the dappled/contrasty light, and lots of leaves.

Northern Parula

Philadelphia Vireo

I also saw almost a dozen White-throated Sparrows, the first ones I had seen this late summer. In pretty short order, they will be one of the most common migrants passing through.

In my previous post, I showed some close-ups of the Autumn Coralroot. Here is an overall view, showing how obscure this little orchid really is! It is about 15 cm tall and in full flower.

In the past few days, Great Plain's Ladies'-tresses are showing up in various grassy places at Rondeau.

The flower spikes have a spicy vanilla fragrance, and the centres of each flower shows a creamy colouration.

I always like seeing a young White Pine seedling make an appearance. Will this one survive to maturity, or will it become nutrition for a White-tailed Deer?

I have been to Clear Creek Forest Prov Park a couple of times, partly to look for a very rare butterfly (Marine Blue) that had been seen, but partly just because the open meadows are great for butterflies and the quiet woods of this old growth type forest is just so inspiring.

I didn't find the rare butterfly, but there was a good variety of more typical ones, including, Common Buckeye, which were actually common.....

Common Ringlet

Common Wood-Nymph

This next one, an Eastern Tailed Blue, was as close as I could get to the Marine Blue.

I was pleased to find at least a couple Great Spangled Fritillary busily feeding on various sunflower types.

Viceroys were fairly common. In fact they outnumbered the similar looking Monarchs.

The couple of Monarchs that I did encounter liked the Teasel...

...as did the Orange Sulphurs.

Red Admirals were very few, at least of what I saw.

I only saw this single Silver Spotted Skipper, but there were likely more.

As I was walking through the open meadow, I noticed this dead tree full of roosting Turkey Vultures. They have been gathering and migrating southwesterly, and the local hawk watch sites have reported them in increasing numbers over the last few days. There are tens of thousands on their way!

In other news, last night I had the black light on in the back yard. Most things I got were fairly typical, but I'm glad I paid a little more attention to this one. It is a Coffee-loving Pyrausta, and is the second one I have had come to the lights in my yard. The first one was back in August, 2020, and at the time it was the first record on iNaturalist, and the first record for Canada. Since then, it has been found in a small number of places elsewhere in Ontario, and someone who was digging through their old moth photos, posted one that was photographed near Leamington back in 2017.

This morning, while enjoying my second cup of coffee in the back yard with Marie, I saw this butterfly come in. I got a quick look, then went and grabbed my camera but it disappeared. Fortunately it came back and I managed to get a couple of photos. It is Horace's Duskywing, a late summer migrant from the south. According to iNat, it is the first record for Chatham-Kent, with only a handful of other records in southwestern Ontario. Most are in Essex Co, with a single record in north Lambton and a couple in the Toronto area.

If you would like to subscribe, or unsubscribe, to Nature Nuggets, send an email to: prairietramper@gmail.com

Another New Moth Species for Canada!

 It was almost exactly a year ago, on September 17, 2019, that I photographed a moth while black lighting at the Moore Wildlife Area, in west central Lambton County. I didn't know what it was at the time, but knew it wasn't something I had seen before. As is usually the case, by the time I down loaded it, processed it and tried to figure out what it was, several days had gone by. I still did not know what it was, so I posted it on BugGuide, hoping that someone more knowledgeable would put a name to it. And someone did. It was believed to be the Liatris Stem Borer (Papaipema beeriana). I posted it on iNaturalist, and the experts there agreed. It was a new species for Canada. Even on iNaturalist, there are only records showing for the states of Wisconsin and Iowa, although with the greater prevalence of the host plant in other states, undoubtedly occurs in greater abundance than those records show.

As you can see, from the human eye perspective, this one isn't especially colourful or attractive, but it is an element of nature just the same. Who knows what important role it plays in nature.

The fact that its larvae specialize in feeding on the endangered Dense Blazing-star (Liatris spicata) only serves to make this moth a little more unusual, and therefore it is not surprising that it has not been found in Canada before.

Dense Blazing-star is limited primarily to the high quality remnant tallgrass prairie regions of Essex and Lambton counties, and while it can be fairly abundant where it occurs, it is very restricted even in these two counties. It is historically known from Chatham-Kent, and although there are records far and wide beyond these areas, they are almost certainly of tallgrass prairie plantings or gardens.

Ojibway Prairie Prov Nature Reserve, Windsor

Dense Blazing-star is most abundant at the Walpole Island First Nation, but black lighting for moths has not been done there very frequently. I did manage to spend a couple of evenings there quite late in the season last year, but not near a site where Dense Blazing-star occurred, and never came across it. That tallgrass prairie plant has been included in various prairie restoration seed mixes, which is not surprising since it is such a pleasing and impressive plant. And it had been planted along with various other tallgrass prairie species a couple of decades ago in the Moore Wildlife Area, so somehow a moth found its way to this prairie patch. As it turns out, this moth has been recorded across the river in Michigan, so it is possible that with the prevailing westerly winds, a moth or two might have come from there, or even from an as yet unknown population at Walpole.

It was just a little over a week ago, on August 25, 2020, that I set up my black lights in the yard at home. Now as much as I like to think my yard is interesting to moths, and I have photographed quite a few different kinds, I always set up my black light in the back yard, where there is access to more vegetation and it is farther away from competing lights. On this night, however, I decided to put up one light in the back yard, and one in the front yard. Going back and forth checking to see what had arrived, I managed to encounter a fairly good diversity of moths, beetles and others. Towards the end of my ~3 hour stint with the black light, I noticed a colourful moth, medium small, come to the white sheet in the front yard. My first inclination was to call it a Raspberry Pyrausta, which I had photographed on occasion in my yard. I almost didn't take this one's photo because of that, but since there wasn't any other moth grabbing my attention, I decided to do it anyway since it was so colourful and cooperative.

Once I got the photos onto the computer and began the processing and labelling procedure, I realized that this one didn't fit the usual Raspberry Pyrausta. I checked the field guide more closely, but did not find it there. I then checked for Pyrausta in the BugGuide database, and there were lots of photos to peruse. And several seemed to match my moth. But when I checked to see the range for that one, it did not show up in Canada. It was known from several states south of the border. I then checked the Moth Photographers Group database, and there were no records from Canada. I checked on iNaturalist, and again, there were no records for Canada. Its range was largely in the states surrounding the Gulf of Mexico, with fewer scattered records north. There were records from as far north as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and Indiana, but none from New York state, or Michigan. But when I posted it on both BugGuide and iNaturalist, the species was confirmed. It is known as the Coffee-loving Pyrausta (Pyrausta tyralis), and as you can see from the image which follows, is both colourful and fairly distinctive.

Since I am a coffee drinker, and not a beer drinker, I think this one will be my new favourite moth!

One never knows what one will find when the time is spent searching the natural world....it is always an adventure! I think I will keep on black lighting a bit more.......

Addendum: today I got my copy of Ontario Moths: A Checklist, by David Beadle, Michael King and Phill Holder, and which was just published by Hawk Owl Publishing in August of this year. It includes many photos along with the list of 3187 confirmed species of moths for Ontario. My photo of the Dense Blazing-star Borer moth is included, as requested by the authors. As expected, this Coffee-loving Pyrausta is not included, so the moth checklist is already out dated. 

For anyone interested in this Ontario Moths: A Checklist, check it out at www.mattholderfund.com.