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.

I Ate the Whole Thing

To those who are squeamish – DO NOT READ FURTHER!

Roughly 50 years ago an eastern cottontail had made a nest beneath our front window and behind a line of small shrubs. There she delivered a litter of young. I no longer remember how we knew the nest and its occupants were there, but we weren’t the only ones who found the nest. Later, I looked out the window and saw an eastern chipmunk eating one of the young rabbits, grabbed a camera and managed to get a (not very good) photograph of the predation –

It’s well known that most species of squirrels (eastern chipmunks are ground squirrels) have a taste for meat as well as the nuts, berries and seeds that are usually thought of as squirrel food.

One recent day while we were walking a path through a beautiful woodland we took a break to sit and enjoy the day and the forest. We hadn’t sat there long before an eastern chipmunk appeared on a nearby log. The chipmunk was eating and posed nicely for a photo –

By the third or fourth photo it became apparent that the chipmunk was feasting on a small frog, apparently a small wood frog –

Time for a video –

After it had eaten the entire frog, the fastidious chipmunk, having no napkin, wiped its mouth on the log and left.

Tail Slap

It was a beautiful spring evening, a great evening to head for the nearest beaver pond to see and photograph whatever was happening there.

On the walk to the pond I could hear a common raven calling but couldn’t locate the bird. Then the raven flew from a clump of trees far across the field, and right behind it was a common crow. Crows harass hawks, owls – and ravens. They flew on by, the raven performed a flip and put on the brakes, letting the crow fly past. With that, the crow abandoned the chase and the raven circled back to fly in the other direction –

There are a few bluebird boxes in the field, two of which have been claimed by tree swallows –

As I got closer to the beaver pond it was time for full camo: a leafy jacket, facemask and gloves. Because I seldom photograph wildlife in parks or where they’re habituated to humans, camouflage helps me get more and better photos.

A pair of Canada geese swam in the beaver pond and set up a racket as I got closer –

While the geese were carrying on, a male wood duck flew in to land on the far side of the beaver pond – what beautiful birds they are –

It was only a few minutes later when a muskrat emerged from the plants along the edge of the water and proceeded to swim across the pond – they're fast swimmers –

Fifteen minutes after the muskrat swam past the first beaver surfaced, swam across the pond following the muskrat and disappeared from view into a much larger wetland. A few minutes later two beavers popped to the surface almost simultaneously and proceeded to swim around the pond for a while –

The larger beaver quietly dove, while the smaller one continued to swim around the pond –

Beavers are cautious when there's something strange nearby (me), they’ll often tail slap and dive in one motion. In this case, the beaver immediately resurfaced and then did another tail slap which I caught on camera in a series of still images –

And stitched more than 20 of those photos together to yield a “slow motion video" –

And then it was time to leave the beavers alone to be beavers.