Small and Large

The day dawned cloudy and hazy and extremely humid but it wasn’t too hot and there was a pleasant breeze. And so I decided to take a longer walk than I’ve taken in over a year and headed to a state game land. Since the Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC) is responsible for all birds and mammals in the state, I believe the name should be “Pennsylvania Wildlife Commission” – but it’s not and the land the PGC manages are called Game Lands. Those names make it appear that the PGC’s allegiance is only to hunters.

In any case, game lands harbor all sorts of wildlife from tiny insects to bear and elk. This day in mid-summer, when bird song has essentially ended, the only wildlife that’s really active are the hordes of insects of various sizes and lifestyles.

So it’s no wonder that butterflies were some of the first things I photographed that day, especially because many butterflies are quite photogenic, even the very small least skipper.

Some of those butterflies were feeding on nectar in the abundant teasel flowers. Teasels were introduced to North America for use in the textile industry to raise the nap on woolen cloth and make the cloth softer and warmer. While that use has been displaced by machinery, the species remains as an invasive plant in old fields and pastures where its flowers feed butterflies –

Even more abundant were the bright yellow flowers of thin-leaved sunflower –

I was walking a long loop that took me past several wetlands. One of those wetlands had a large assemblage of greater bladderwort in bloom. Greater bladderwort is a small carnivorous plant that lives in shallow water and captures tiny aquatic creatures in inflatable bladders on its roots and stems and has interesting yellow flowers –

Among the other small things to be seen that day were two species of damselflies; first the fragile forktail and later the eastern forktail –

And suddenly the largest critter of the day flushed from a tall white pine – an adult bald eagle –

With that it was but a short walk back to the car.