Late Season Backyard Wildlife in Macro Mode

The ongoing warm weather has certainly been a boon for insects. So I have been busily photographing whatever I can find in my yard and immediate area. This colourful Orchard Spider was in our rain barrel.

On our continuing tomato plants was this Tobacco Hornworm, the larval form of the Carolina Sphinx Moth.

 The 'horn' at the tail end is where it gets part of its name.

On some late flowering goldenrod were a number of wasps, but they were more interested in sipping the nectar than they were about my camera lens bearing down on them at close range.

Northern Paper Wasp (Polistes fuscatus)

A Spotted Beet Webworm was visiting the Echinacea. There are still quite a few flowers of the Echinacea in good condition, with more developing heads that will likely continue until the weather takes a serious turn for the cold. As noted in my previous post, there are still butterflies congregating on the Echinacea. It is not surprising to find Painted Ladies and Peck's Skippers still feasting on them, with the occasional Common Buckeye and more numerous Cabbage White, Orange Sulphur and Clouded Sulphur in the vicinity.....as well as Monarchs.

Spotted Beet Webworm

Speaking of Monarchs, they are still developing! I had this one form a chrysalis not that long ago, and it finally emerged in due time.

 It is interesting to see the chrysalis case turn clear, showing the folded up adult inside. When it gets to this stage, it is typically ~24 hours until the adult emerges, usually within an hour or two of first daylight.

 The frustrating thing is that the actual emergence can happen in as little as a minute or even less! There has been more than one occasion when I was keeping a close eye on the chrysalis only to step away for perhaps less than 10 minutes and when I returned, it was out with partially opened wings. But for those who have watched this more successfully, it is said to take less than a minute, sometimes no more than 30 seconds. The wings begin to unfold shortly after emergence.

 Eventually the wings are fully extended, and the butterfly spends an hour or two waiting for the fluid it has pumped into the wings to dry and harden, allowing the stiffness required for flight.

After this Monarch finally got its wings spread and dried and ready to fly, it took flight for a ways only to return and land on my shirt. After a minute or so, it then flew off for good. Although it seems a tad late for this stage of monarch life, there are still some in the chrysalis even now. My next door neighbour had a caterpillar on one of several milkweed plants in his yard up until a few days ago, and now has a chrysalis hanging on a wire beside the house. It has been in that form for about a week. I check it every morning, and it could emerge any day now.

Blacklighting after dark is always an adventure. Each time is different. On this occasion when I had the light set up in the back yard for about two hours, it was great to see such diversity of insects arrive at the white sheet. One of the most peculiar critters was this Nut or Acorn Weevil (Curculio sp).

Chickweed Geometer (Haematopis grataria)

Crane Fly

Dingy Cutworm (Feltia jaculifera)

Greater Black Dart (Xestia dolosa)

 This next one is a type of Green Lacewing, perhaps the Golden-eyed Lacewing (Chrysopa sp).

 

I had seen the following things in the garden earlier, but didn't know at the time what left them. They are the eggs of a Green Lacewing.

Large Yellow Underwing (Noctua pronuba)

 An unexpected but significant visitor was this next one: a Round-tipped Conehead (Neoconocephalus retusus). According to the accepted range maps in a couple of my grasshopper/katydid reference books, it doesn't occur in Ontario or even Canada, and I wondered if it was something else. It does occur both to the east and west of Chatham-Kent at a somewhat similar latitude, however, so not beyond the realm of possibility. I posted it on BugGuide and an orthopteran (grasshopper/cricket/katydid) specialist from the New England states confirmed its identity, so this could possibly be the first Canadian record.

 This next one is anything but rare. It is the Striped Cucumber Beetle (Acalymma vittatum).

 Although insect activity is winding down as the weather approaches more normal condition, undoubtedly there will be more opportunities to capture some late season critters on digital film....stay tuned!

Hot, humid and sultry, but there are still lots of reasons to get out!

During these hot, humid, dog days of summer, I have been picky about the times I am out in the field. Apparently the term 'dog days of summer' refers to the hot sultry period from early July to about August 11, and includes the period when the dog star is in conjunction with the sun (I'm Sirius :-).  I've never really enjoyed the hot humid weather, and ever since I've had to contend with Lyme Disease, it has been more of a challenge. But with so many things to see, I definitely get out when I can!

Not that long ago, I ventured out for some pre-sunrise photography, at one of my regular locations: the main harbour of Erieau, looking across Rondeau Bay to the provincial park. As I got out, I realized how sultry the weather was.....it was actually foggy on my way to Erieau, and with 100% humidity and no breeze it was not comfortable at all, even at about 5:15 a.m. I had forgotten to bring my knife to cut the humidity and haze. And the mosquitoes were already up and at it.

 I usually find the 30 or so minutes before the sun rises to have the best colours, and by using a tripod, a neutral density filter, cable release, mirror-lock-up and a low ISO rating, I can get some appealing slow shutter speed shots where the colours blend in nicely. This first one was an 8 second exposure.

Just as the sun was breaking the horizon and I was packing up, I noticed a canoe heading out, so I nabbed a photo of that as well. Obviously it took a much faster shutter speed to capture them. This next one was at 1/125 second.

I headed over to Rondeau Provincial Park shortly afterwards. The woodland atmosphere was dark and foreboding, as the sky was mostly overcast, and the fog had remained in the still air to give an ethereal look and feel. Even the birds were quiet, but couple of months ago it would have been alive with song at that hour.

Spider webs were everywhere, and obvious by the way the drops of moisture clung to the silken threads, appearing as a string of pearls.

I headed out the South Point Trail, hoping for a little breeze and some kind of action as the sun broke through the haze, the wind shook the spider webs free of dew drops and the wildlife came alive.

Some of the mid-summer wildflowers were in fine shape.

Tall Bellflower

Purple Flowering Raspberry

 When I got to the 'point', it was clear that erosion was ongoing. There used to be a bench a short distance beyond and to the right of this Danger sign. This is the third bench in as many years, in three different locations, that has had to be rescued by park staff, which demonstrates the extent of the erosion. It isn't just occurring at one place. The erosion is partly due to the higher water levels this year, but also due to the presence of the large pier at Erieau which interrupts the normal water currents carrying sand.

The trail and road used to be here not that long ago!

There were a few butterflies.....I didn't see anything really unexpected, but the next two were nice and at least briefly cooperative for the camera.

Appalachian Brown

One of 5 Giant Swallowtails sipping nectar from Wild Bergamot

I explored other sections of the park, and got some photos of this Small Green Wood Orchid. It grows in wet areas on rotting logs, especially in some of the sloughs.

On another trail, I came across lots of White Vervain (Verbena urticifolia). Most people wouldn't give it a second glance let alone a first one, yet the tiny flowers, only a few millimetres across and appearing on long slender branches are simple but attractive.

I came across this tiny Orchard Spider feasting on its most recent meal.

And this is the time of year for one of Canada's rarest orchids to appear...the Nodding Pogonia (Triphora trianthophora), which as far as anyone knows, only occurs at Rondeau. I wrote a fairly extensive post about it previously, entitled: A highly endangered native orchid.

During one of my planned visits, I took park staff out to see it (it is so small and occurs in an out of the way place; none of the current park staff had ever seen it in real life before this day).

It is a bit of a hike to get to the location, crossing some of the deepest, darkest and swampiest woodland such as is shown in the image below, all the while fending off hordes of bloodthirsty mosquitoes. Other than the occasional park staff who I take to this favoured spot, I have never seen anyone else even close to it, and I love it!

And we saw plants with single flowers, doubles and the even rarer triple (from which it gets the 'Tri' part of its Latin name). I always hope to find ones that are strongly magenta in colour, but it seems that this year, for some reason, they are mostly white with just a slight tinge of magenta at best.