Rondeau Butterfly Count

Just a brief note regarding Life on a Sandspit: it seems to have garnered a lot of interest and is doing well.

It is currently available at the Friends of Rondeau store (inside the Rondeau Visitor Centre), as well as the Bayview Market, just outside the Rondeau PP gates. It is also available via the Sydenham Field Naturalists, and you can see it, along with other nature publications on their web site here. I am slowly finding other local sites where it may be available, and will provide updates on those as they occur.

On to the butterfly count post.

Just a few days ago, on July 9, was the annual butterfly count, for the Rondeau area. Over the past 22 years, it has ranged from 35 to 47 species, averaging about 41 species. I don't have the final tally for this year, but based on the area that I and my colleagues did for this one, I think we will definitely be below average both for total species and individuals. I usually get about 18 species, but this year I got only 15. Of course weather is always a factor, and the cool, cloudy, misty weather this year did not bode well. And a downpour of heavy precipitation in the afternoon for some, did not help at all. Nonetheless, it can always be worthwhile to get out and see what is around. The following photos are ones I took while meandering through the several spots I normally cover. I didn't get photos of all the species I recorded, and the results vary.

This first one is the only swallowtail species I encountered, and just one individual!

Black Swallowtail

Bronze Coppers, next, are not a guarantee, and I only saw this one. Fortunately it cooperated to get the kind of photos that allowed me to separate it from the American Copper.

If this count was taken a few years ago, I would have no problem identifying this next one as a Summer Azure. However the lepidopterist taxonomists have examined the Celastrina genus a little differently, and it apparently is not quite so easy, so this one could be as Summer Azure, but I left it as Celastrina sp.

Common Wood-nymph

Eastern Comma

Eastern-tailed Blue

Little Wood-satyr

Monarchs, shown next, got off to a slow start in the count, but as the day wore on, I came across several areas where Common Milkweed was present in the hundreds of plants. One area could have even had more than a thousand plants, so getting several dozen Monarchs was not hard. If I had been able to carefully survey this largest milkweed site, I could have easily doubled the number of Monarchs, but by that time I was losing energy so I did most of my surveying via scanning the large field with binoculars.

Crescent butterflies are normally fairly common, but for some reason, that wasn't the case on this day. I had just this one Northern Crescent.

Although the ? on this next butterfly isn't all that visible, it was indeed a Question Mark.

Red Admirals, at 57 individuals, were by far the most common of the butterflies, other than Cabbage Whites at about 70.

Of course anytime one is out in such habitat, there are always other things to see, so I took advantage of the photo ops I was given. This Eastern Gartersnake was quietly sitting along the edge of one of the first trails I took. I presume it was trying to soak up some of the non-existent sunshine, as it never moved even a bit, although I got quite close.

Along the Erieau Marsh Trail there were the usual things like Great Blue Heron.....

...and even a Trumpeter Swan.

Song Sparrows were common in most areas.....

...as were Red-winged Blackbirds.

Along one area, which follows an old Railway Track, I saw three Wild Turkeys, but true to their character, did not allow me to get very close. This next photo is highly cropped.

Along this same part of the area I covered, I noted several clusters of a Species At Risk, known as Prairie Rose.

And I even saw the occasional day-flying moth that enabled me to shoot it: the Eight-spotted Forester.

Once all the results are tabulated, I will update the results for this count, but as far as I can tell in talking with several other counters, it will not be one of the better ones. Every year is different! Update: there was a total of 1777 individuals of 36 species recorded on this day, so definitely on the low end of average.

 

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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.

Return of the Dickcissels

They're back! Over the course of the past few days, Dickcissels have returned to places they were present at in 2017. Of course the site just east of Wheatley has had them for a couple of weeks or more this year, but that was a location where they had been present for several years.

2017 was an unprecedented year for them in Ontario, and the southwestern municipalities of Essex, Chatham-Kent and Lambton had the vast majority. Members of the Ontario Field Ornithologists will be aware of the article I wrote in the April, 2018 issue of Ontario Birds discussing the 2017 influx of Dickcissel in Ontario. One of the questions I posed near the end of the article was whether any would return in 2018. The Dickcissel population in the heart of its range had been expanding slowly north and northeast for a few years, and if birds have successfully bred in their newly expanded territory, there would be a good chance they will return the following year. We haven't had the same types of weather yet that 2017 experienced....sustained high winds from the west or southwest.....so any returning birds are likely the result of successful nesting in 2017.

So far Dickcissels have been reported in several places where they were known to have nested the previous year. This includes places in Lambton and Middlesex as well as several places in Chatham-Kent. For example the Campbell Line Pasture just northeast of Blenheim had as many as 19 birds in 2017. So far only one or two birds have been reported this year, but I am not aware of anyone doing a thorough check of this large site. Observations have been from the road only, and that is probably due in part to the presence of large numbers of Wood Ticks. Even if you stay on the grassy laneway, you can encounter a couple of dozen ticks or more in just a few dozen metres or so.

The Dealtown Crown Land prairie (southwest of Blenheim) is another site which had as many as 11 Dickcissels in 2017. I went out a few days ago and came upon at least one and possibly two, males as well as two females. Today some birders went to the site and also saw two males and two females.

It will take a bit of effort to re-visit all of the sites in southern Ontario to see what the return rate might be. I will be keeping a close look at eBird and Ontbirds to document the results.

There are other grassland birds occupying similar sites. Bobolinks and Eastern Meadowlarks are frequently encountered. The former is officially a Species At Risk, so it is nice to see them around in good numbers.

Eastern Kingbirds aren't really a grassland species, but they do like open shrubby areas adjacent to grasslands. I came across several pairs of kingbirds at the Dealtown site.

 Along the trail in to the Dealtown site there were lots of Summer Azures.

A recent, but short, visit to Rondeau didn't turn up any unusual birds. But I did see that Hoary Puccoon is doing well along the grassy beach areas.

A few butterflies were out along the trails there, including:

Red-spotted Purple

Spicebush Swallowtail

Northern Crescent

 I'm a little rusty on my skippers, but I think this next one is a Hobomok Skipper.

I also saw Monarchs, Red Admirals and Eastern Tiger Swallowtails, but didn't get any photos.

On the Monarch theme, a few days ago Marie and I noted a female Monarch busily laying eggs on some of the numerous Common Milkweeds in our yard. I thought they might have hatched by now and did some investigating. Sure enough I found my first Monarch caterpillar of the year.

It is really tiny, measuring not quite 4 mm in total length, so undoubtedly only hatched a day or two ago.

I was up at the Angler Line area to see if the Cattle Egret and Yellow-headed Blackbirds were still around. They were on private property, but the landowner has graciously told me to come by any time. The Cattle Egret has apparently not been seen for several weeks now, but the Yellow-headed Blackbirds are still around at another feeder. One of these days I hope to get my kayak out to see if they are nesting in the maze of cattail islands about half a kilometre off the end of Angler Line. So although I didn't catch up with my target species, I did have the satisfaction of seeing other things.

Yesterday I was at a meeting at a private property just west of Lighthouse Cove, in Essex County. We did spend a bit of time outside, and saw some interesting critters.

An immature Bald Eagle flew by.

 There were two or three Black-crowned Night-Herons.

 It was bright and sunny, so Map Turtles were taking advantage of the conditions.

No more room here!

 Several Northern Water Snakes were also enjoying the sun, including this big female. Since water snakes give birth to live young, they need to bask a lot so that the young are fully developed to result in a successful birth later in August.

 Some water snakes were a little shy.