Regal

Monarch butterflies have been in the news during the last few years because they’re beautiful, most people have seen them, most migrate to spend the winter in Mexico and their population has been in decline –

There are other common orange butterflies, the fritillaries, that spend the summer flying over fields in Pennsylvania. Five species of fritillaries are relatively common in northcentral Pennsylvania, the most abundant being the great spangled fritillary –

While there are many species of fritillaries in the western states, five species are all we have here. But there’s one more fritillary that can be found in Pennsylvania if you know where to look and get permission to look. That species is the regal fritillary –

The regal fritillary was once found from Massachusetts to Virginia and west to Kansas and the Dakotas, it’s declining everywhere and has vanished east of the Mississippi except for one very small area in southcentral Pennsylvania.

The regal fritillary’s larvae feed on violet leaves, primarily on the leaves of the arrow-leaf violet –

The adults are less picky and feed on the nectar of a number of species of plants, preferring butterfly milkweed and pasture thistle –

These butterflies are dependent on disturbed sites containing little bluestem grass, broomsedge and their host plants, sites maintained by periodic fire and heavy disturbance.

In Pennsylvania the regal fritillary inhabits a small area of suitable habitat in a restricted area which is only open for a few days each year and only to those limited few with permits. I happened to get one of those permits and spent part of a morning searching for the butterflies with a few other folks and our escorts.

We found quite a few regal fritillaries and many other more common butterflies –

As well as some hummingbird clearwing moths that fly during the day and feed on nectar –

But the regals were our real objective, and we were quite successful in finding them –

Most of the butterflies we saw were males with one row of white spots and another row of orange spots on their hind wings. The females with two rows of white spots on their hind wings were just beginning to emerge from pupation –

Regal fritillaries mate in midsummer, the females then scatter their eggs. The eggs hatch in the fall and the tiny larvae overwinter in the plant debris on the ground. The following spring the larvae feed, pupate and give rise to a new generation of regal fritillaries –

Habitat loss is considered to be the primary cause of the species’ decline so the existing habitat is closely monitored and managed. The regal fritillary is endangered although official recognition of that fact will be a while in coming. Hopefully another suitable site will be located and a second population can be established to ensure that the species will continue to be part of Pennsylvania’s fauna.

National Moth Week

It’s that time of year again, National Moth Week (Saturday July 18, through Sunday, July 26), time to look at the great variety of night flying insects that we call moths. Moths form the largest portion of the group of insects known as Lepidoptera, the remainder of the group are the butterflies, which evolved from day-flying moths.

There are approximately 12,000 named species of moths in North America and an unknown number of as yet undescribed and unnamed species. Moths are essential to a healthy ecosystem: moth larvae are an extremely important food for nestling songbirds, moths (not mosquitoes) are a primary food of bats and many plants depend on moths for pollination. Only a handful of moths are what might be called pests; the vast, vast majority are either innocuous or beneficial.

While some moths are small and drab, others are large and colorful and others are a combination. Here’s a sample of interesting moths –

Moths are in serious trouble from pesticides, superfluous lights at night and habitat loss. Lawn care chemicals, recreational mowing of large lawns and outdoor lights when nobody’s awake have serious adverse impacts on moths – and those impacts spread through the ecosystem.

To sample the moths around your house leave an outside light on for a couple of hours after sunset and see what moths are hanging on the wall. Then don’t forget to turn off the light so moths can spend the rest of the night doing what moths do.

Red-heads II

Earlier this year there was a post on In Forest and Field describing how I found red-headed woodpeckers not too far from home. I’ve returned to the site several times in the intervening months and, although I’ve seen the birds, have never been able to get any photos of them that are worth posting or even keeping.

Back I went in late-June and walked through the stand of large trees where the woodpeckers had been in the spring. No sign of them.

So I headed out of the woods and back toward where the car was parked. Across the road there’s a patch of young forest and a recently mowed area of grass with a few scattered trees – and suddenly there was that bright white flash of a red-headed woodpecker’s wings –

Red-headed woodpeckers are well known for feeding like flycatchers, catching flying insects in open areas. And here it was doing just that.

The bird sometimes launched from a large walnut, sometimes from a smaller tree some distance away on the edge of the woods –

It almost always went back to one of those two trees, but frequently not the one from which it took off. Usually it had insects held in its beak, apparently to feed young ones –

Suddenly there were two red-headed woodpeckers on the small tree, a breeding pair! –

They each sallied forth to catch insects –

They caught more insects, with some earlier catches still held in their beaks. After getting a beakful each bird would fly off toward the stand of large trees – where they must have had a nest with young.

I tried to follow them to their nest, but each time lost sight of them as they flew above the dense canopy of leaves far faster than I can walk. Looking through the stand of large trees in hopes of finding the nest tree may well have taken many hours with no assurance of success.

At the end of January, when I’d first found the birds, there was a juvenile as well as one or more adults. It’s good to see evidence that they’re nesting in the area once again.