A Needle In A Snowstack
November 11th, 2015
Today I was treated to what was probably my finest mega-rarity yet:
a
bird that is here in Ontario for the first time in recorded history! It's
called a Pink-Footed Goose, breeds in Iceland and Greenland, and somehow ended
up travelling with a migrant flock all the way to North America.
This bird is a 1 in 100,000 (literally) needle in a haystack, part of a flock
of tens of thousands of migrating Snow Geese massed in the fields near
Casselman. And that is a spectacle I had never seen before, either--thousands,
yes, but not tens of thousands. It gave me a fresh appreciation for why
they're called Snow Geese. On the ground, they cluster so densely they look
like a layer of snow. In the air,
they
look like a blizzard.
I joined a group of about ten other birders on Lafleche Road near Highway 138,
all scanning the flock with scopes. They actually had the bird in sight when I
arrived, but before I could get it in
my sights, the entire flock
spooked, took to the air, swirled around and finally landed again, shuffling
the deck. (Just to keep things interesting, they typically shuffle the deck
like that every half hour or so.)
After an hour of fruitless searching I was about to give up. Then I saw Tony
Beck arrive and figured, well, if anyone is going to find it, it's going to be
him. So I texted my husband and told him I might be back late, blew some warm
air onto my hands, and settled back in. And a half hour later I watched an
unmistakable Pink-Footed Goose plowing his way through the snowy multitudes!
No pictures today, but I promise to take the camera back up soon. Speaking of
snow-white creatures, I'm hoping to photograph an ermine this winter...
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Sometimes nature comes to you
August 23rd, 2015
I haven't been getting out on nature walks much lately (waiting for a plantar
fasciitis to heal up), but sometimes nature comes to you! I was out taming my
overgrown meadow of a back lawn a few weeks ago, when I found this beauty.
Argiope aurantia, known by many names including golden garden spider (the
etymology of her Latin name is "gilded silver-face.") She was well over an
inch long. I rushed inside to get the camera, and my first picture when I got
back was of her busily wrapping up her latest prey.
She finished with that quickly and then headed back to the center of her web.
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The dense, zigzag vertical structure is called a "stabilimentum", and is
characteristic of the webs of these kinds of spiders. Scientists don't know
for sure why they do it. (The original theory, now discarded, is that it
helped stabilize the web somehow.) According to one of my Facebook commenters,
it has been discovered that the stabilimentum reflects ultraviolet light. Some
flowers use ultraviolet patterns to attract pollinating insects, so the
purpose may be to attract prey in that fashion.
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Cedar Grove Bugs
August 9th, 2015
After reading
Gillian
Mastromatteo's many accounts of Cedar Grove Nature Trail, I finally
decided to go there and see what I could see. The trail is located near North
Gower on Roger Stevens Drive, part of a large conservation area called
Marlborough Forest.
The first thing to say is that this is the most deer fly infested place I've
been, topping even Larose Forest. I'm learning not to get psyched out by deer
flies in Ontario, since the variety we have here seldom seems to bite
(
seldom--not never, seldom. I do not recommend letting an Ontario deer
fly be at leisure on your body.) As opposed to, say, the deer flies at Outer
Banks, which very much bite and bite hard. But when there are fifty-some flies
buzzing around you and getting tangled in your hair, it gets old fast even
when they don't bite.
Gillian has told stories of walking through these woods attended by a swarm of
deer flies, until a group of large dragonflies comes along and picks them off
one by one. I thought it sounded like fun to be a dragonfly feeder, so I
waited...and waited, but my knights in shining chitin failed to show. So I
doused myself in about a gallon of bug spray. Which helped, though not nearly
as much as you might think.
The good news is that the trail was also teeming with interesting, less
obnoxious insects. It was in fact more rich with small insect life than
anywhere I've been. Many of them were attracted to the black-eyed susans that
were abundantly in bloom. Most were too small for my telephoto lens to
properly capture (which drives my hunger for a macro lens), but here are a few
I did manage.
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When I first arrived these little insects were so perfectly arranged, they
looked like part of the flower. I was stumped by them and figured they were
probably in one of the many categories of miscellaneous small bugs
(treehoppers, leafhoppers, planthoppers, plant bugs...) that I was little
familiar with. The folks on
BugGuide were finally able to
enlighten me: they are in the "flower moth" family, probably Landryia
impositella. I would never have guessed that these tiny little guys were a
type of moth! Clearly an understudied insect, since you can't even find a
Wikipedia page until you get up to the Family level (
Scythrididae), and even
them it's little more than a stub.
A Goldenrod Crab Spider. Crab spiders are ambush predators, lying in wait with
their long front legs wide open ready to grab. They can slowly change color
from white, to pale greenish-yellow, to bright yellow, or back, to camouflage
against the flower they're on. (The camouflage is both a hunting aid and a
defense against their own predators.) This one wasn't quite a match yet to the
deep orangey-yellow of the black-eyed susan, which is probably why every small
insect I saw land on the flower quickly took off again!
This one's color was so off it decided its best course of action was to hide.
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Anxious Mom
July 31st, 2015
I was on the bike path near Corkstown Road when this doe came walking down
the fence line, stopped, and gave me a long, hard stare. Can you see what
she's nervous about?
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Mating Jewelwings
July 27th, 2015
While I spent most of my walk at Sugarbush Trail photographing butterflies,
when I got to Chelsea Creek the beautiful Ebony Jewelwings captured my
attention.
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Jewelwing courtship antics rival those of birds. I watched two males chase
each other around for what seemed like forever, fluttering in endless circles,
metallic blue-green bodies sparkling in the sun. Numerous female jewelwings,
perched on the nearby vegetation, also watched. Finally one of the males
seemed to win the fight.
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Sugarbush Leps
July 24th, 2015
Some butterflies and moths from an early-July stroll at Sugarbush Trail.
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I assumed by the jagged wing edges that this was an Eastern Comma / Question
Mark (a pair of common lookalike butterflies), but couldn't get over how big
and beautiful it was. Neither of those had ever struck me that way. When I
studied my photos back home, the fine details gave it away as a Compton
Tortoiseshell--a new one for me!
A Banded Hairstreak. My first sighting of a hairstreak butterfly (years ago)
was surreal. My eyes couldn't make sense of it. It seemed that somehow a bland
butterfly had been superimposed over a colorful one, and the bland facade was
peeling away at the corner.
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A Crescent butterfly, probably Northern Crescent.
I don't know what moth this is--Google suggests perhaps a Maple-Basswood
Leafroller Moth--but I'd swear it's trying to mimic a fallen white flower
petal. Even the head looks like a plant part! Whatever it is, it's abundant in
the Gatineau in summer. Those bits of white debris on the trail might not be
debris.
Note the discarded chrysalis in the second picture. I didn't notice it myself
when taking the picture.
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After six years of trying
July 20th, 2015
'Tis the season of parental hyper-vigilance. Avian parents, that is. Each
summer, I experience this phase where birds become noisy and obvious if I
stumble into their nesting area. Sometimes, if they have a young fledgling
hidden nearby (one who has left the nest but isn't independent yet), they will
actually go out of their way to attract my attention to themselves--all the
better to draw it away from their vulnerable chick. This can result in
stunning views of species that are normally retiring and elusive.
To wit:
An Indigo Bunting at Watt's Creek Trail. The mix of fields and woods there
attracts them, and you can always hear them singing in summer. With binoculars
you can sometimes see one too, usually perched in a distant treetop. But to
get this good a view of one is a rare event!
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Bladder Campion
July 17th, 2015
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Cape Breton Headlands
July 13th, 2015
Some of Mike's photos from the headlands of Schooner Pond and White Point.
Check out that tree at the back.
I remember trees like this in old Sierra games. If you got too close to them
they ate you.
That's about as close as I want that camera lens to me, thankyouverymuch.
Oh no you don't.
This is it for our Cape Breton photos, barring any that Mike may choose to
post on his own blog. My triplist follows.
(
All the birds )
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Highlands Park Vistas
July 11th, 2015
Some Cape Breton scenery shots, taken by my favorite guest photographer (i.e.
husband) and developed (i.e.
Gimped) by
yours truly. This set is from the Highlands National Park. Click on any image
for a 1920x1080 version. (I think the last one, a view from the top of Skyline
Trail, makes a particularly nice wallpaper.)
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