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.

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Prairie patch action, #1

Prairies are great places to explore, for all kinds of reasons. Unfortunately there aren't many left! So sometimes small patches of vegetation that appear somewhat like prairie have to do instead.

I've been to a few of those lately. One place is a narrow strip along an active railway line just east of Thamesville. A few posts ago I highlighted some of my findings. As I was in the area recently, I decided to check it out again. Not surprisingly, the Ironweed that was dominant and highly attractive to butterflies at my previous visit, was just about finished. But as often happens in the natural world, another species takes its place. This time it was Prairie Thistle (Cirsium discolor).

Prairie Thistle is quite uncommon in Ontario, being ranked as S2. It is a much paler purple than the abundant, and not native, Bull Thistle (Cirsium arvense).

Prairie Thistle

And the butterflies loved it! This first image is of a very tattered Giant Swallowtail visiting an equally tattered Ironweed. I was impress by how easily this worn individual could still fly. I am sure that it must have been much more taxing given the lack of lift these wings could provide.

This is another Giant Swallowtail, not quite as tattered as the previous one. During my previous visit I had as many as eight Giants, but there were only about three this time.

 There were at least a couple of Great Spangled Fritillaries around.

Great Spangled Fritillary

And several Monarchs....it was hard to keep track of their numbers as they moved around constantly.

This next image shows not a butterfly, but a day-flying moth known as a Hummingbird Clearwing. In flight it very much resembled a hummer.

Other winged invertebrates included a few damselflies, such as this Eastern Forktail.

But butterflies were the main attraction, and there were the usual common species, such as Viceroy, Black Swallowtail, Eastern Tiger Swallowtail and this Peck's Skipper on the much darker Bull Thistle.

I also visited a friend's family farm north of Thamesville, where several hectares have been planted into various mixes of prairie grasses and forbs. There was much the same mix of butterflies, but I lucked out and got a couple of rarer ones, such as the not-so-common Common Buckeye....

Common Buckeye

.....and the even less common Common Checkered Skipper. It has been an excellent year for this species. I have seen more this year than in all my previous years of looking for butterflies!

Common Checkered Skipper

Where there are wide grassy roadsides in rural areas, there are often a few Groundhogs....at least until the predators get wind of them!

Even more recently I have explored some prairie patches and restoration areas in Lambton. I will be highlighting them in a future post.

Preview of a butterfly count

'Tis the season for butterfly counts. Several in southwestern Ontario have already taken place, and the Rondeau one is coming up this weekend. In preparation for it, I have been out scouting around a bit to see what to expect. With the drier than normal weather, early indications are that butterfly diversity and abundance is down from normal.

Patches of Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) are well known for their attractiveness to butterflies. I visited a large patch a couple of days ago. This area is affectionately known as the Dillon Dump, as it was used as a temporary holding place for debris such as brush, branches, stumps, etc before they were burned. It is located along what remains of the former Dillon Trail, which used to be a driveable road across the southern part of the park. The entire route is next to impossible to find now unless one is quite familiar with the layout of it, and one has some good high rubber boots. Regardless, this open area near the beginning and driest part of the Dillon Trail is now dominated by Common Milkweed. If there was one plant, there had to be at least 1000, and many of them were in some stage of flowering.

Partial view of the Dillon Dump area

Needless to say, this is a hotspot for butterflies. By far one of the more common ones on this occasion was Silver-spotted Skipper, the largest skipper we have. There must have been 50 or more.

Silver-spotted Skipper

The next image shows a view of the Silver-spotted Skipper that one doesn't see nearly as often as the one in the previous image.

There were some smaller skippers around...mostly European Skippers, and some other small butterflies such as Summer Azure, which I didn't photograph. But there were larger butterflies on the wing, such as this Eastern Comma.

Eastern Comma

 The comma is more obvious on the underside of the wing.

Great Spangled Fritillaries were there as well, although the handful I saw all seemed to be a bit faded and not very fresh looking. This one is a little battered as well, with its right hind-wing showing some wear and tear.

Great Spangled Fritillary

Eastern Tiger Swallowtails were noticeable due to their size and flashy colours. There were at least 8 of them there.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

There were a few Little Wood-Satyrs around.

Little Wood-Satyr

A couple of Appalachian Browns were there, one of which was quite fresh looking as well as being cooperative.

Appalachian Brown

With all of the milkweed, I was hoping for a good number of hairstreaks. Alas, I only saw one....this Banded Hairstreak, below. With all of the oaks in the vicinity, I was sure there would be more, which there likely were. However they can be surprisingly difficult to see if they are on the far side or underside of a flower head, and they don't seem to fly as often as many other species of butterflies, so can go unnoticed. This site is in Blake's territory, so undoubtedly he will find a few and maybe some other hairstreak species as well. (By the way, Blake....be prepared for chiggers).

Banded Hairstreak

There were a few dragonflies zipping around, but not a lot of diversity in them. By far the most common one was this White-faced Meadowhawk.

White-faced Meadowhawk

There were other species of milkweed in the area, including Butterfly Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa).

Butterfly Milkweed

For some reason there weren't any butterflies on them while I was looking.

Another milkweed nearby in the grassy beach dunes is Green Milkweed (Asclepias viridiflora). It isn't very colourful, and I have not seen butterflies on them....only ants.

Cluster of Green Milkweed

Sunday looks like a decent day for the butterfly count.....mostly sunny, with temperatures ~28C so hopefully there are lots of butterflies.