National Moth Week

National Moth Week was July 20-28, 2024, a time to appreciate and enjoy moths in all their diversity and beauty.

 

We turn on an outside light, go back inside for an hour or so and then look at the insects the light attracted, especially the moths. The moths spend the night in the refrigerator to slow them down, they're photographed when I release them in the morning. The four day-flying moths in this post were photographed in the field.

You can do that too; unless it’s raining hard, do that on any midsummer’s night and you’ll attract moths, Some will be drab (tan or gray), others will have intricate patterns or be very colorful.

Take a photo of any of the moths you find interesting and do an internet search using your photo and chances are you’ll be rewarded with it’s name and information about the species. And the names we humans have given them are almost as colorful as the moths themselves.

Here are a few of the moths from our front door light this year –

Hopefully you enjoyed these photos and decide to try observing moths yourself – just don’t forget to turn out the light each night so the moths can go about their lives.

Summertime Elk

‘Twas a beautiful day for summer in Pennsylvania; clear as a bell, cool, with a gentle breeze – WOW! And so I easily persuaded H to accompany me on a drive to the elk range to see what we could see. We picked up sandwiches on the way and enjoyed a pleasant ride. Unlike during the fall rut, there were very few people looking for elk which made things even more enjoyable.

Along a gravel road we came upon two elk calves that didn’t stick around long enough for me to get worthwhile photographs.

As we drove along we saw a large bull in a field above the road, so up the hill I went. The bull had wide-spreading antlers reminiscent of two bulls that were photographed years before by Willard Hill; those bulls were nicknamed “Crazy Legs” and “Crazy Legs Jr.”.

An unusual number of bulls in Pennsylvania’s elk herd seem to have what would be called non-typical antlers, with odd configurations: wildly splayed, extraneous points in odd places or downward pointing tines, others have moose-like palmate areas, yet others have many more points than would be normal.

Since the elk population was somewhere below 50 animals in the 1960s and early 70s there couldn’t have been more than a handful of breeding bulls. So our elk population may well be quite inbred, resulting in oddities becoming more common in the population.

After taking quite a few photos of the bull we headed down the road. About a mile and a half later we saw another bull, this one with more typical elk antlers –

We watched him for quite a while as he fed in a field that had been mowed not long before –

I’d been standing by the side of the road photographing the bull and we were just about ready to leave for home when I turned around and saw –

This bull's antlers were odd, but not as non-typical as the first bull we'd seen –

By the time I had some photos of the bull it was getting quite dark and we headed for home.

Eagles in the Park

Bald eagles have nested in a large white pine in northcentral Pennsylvania’s Little Pine State Park for at least 25 years. I remember looking across the lake at the nest way back when and being a bit frustrated because live limbs on the tree blocked all but a small part of the nest.

We visit the park a couple of times each year to see the birds and check on their nesting success. The original nest tree died and the birds continued to use the nest for a while. More recently the eagles built a new nest in another tall lakeside white pine. Last year a Canada goose chose to use the old eagle nest as a place for her own nest. A fellow photographer saw the goslings leave the nest, fall about 50 feet to the ground – they survived – and head for the water. This spring the goose was again incubating her own eggs in the old eagle nest.

One misty morning I headed for the park again to see the eagles and try for some photos. From the vista in the park I looked across the upper part of the lake toward the new nest –

One bird, probably the male, was on a limb near the nest; male bald eagles frequently guard the nest from predators and rivals.

After a while he took off and flew (can you find him in the photo?) to a nearby pine –

He spent some time there before taking off again and heading down the valley toward Pine Creek.

As I waited and watched a great blue heron landed on the lakeshore –

After about 15 minutes the female eagle flew in to land on the same limb where the male had been. She called a few times but, due to the distance (over 1000 feet), I couldn’t hear her. After spending some time there, she took off and heading upstream –

It wasn’t too long before she returned, carrying a large fish –

When she entered the nest she began feeding a young one.

Although it was really hard to see at that distance, it appeared that there were two young eagles in the nest. The eaglet(s) is quite small given the late date when these photos were taken; less than a week later the eaglets in a nest a few miles away were fully feathered and exercising their wings. After the eagle fed her offspring she ate some of the fish herself.

Then the female eagle returned to the limb and, as the morning’s drizzle turned to heavy rain, went back on the nest to shelter the eaglets –

As the rain increased even more it was time for me to seek shelter in the car and head for home and some food.