Lepidoptera Afternoon

                            Lepidoptera – a large order of insects comprising the                                                   butterflies, moths, and skippers.

Unlike some recent days, this was a beautiful day – clear blue sky with puffy white clouds sailing by, temperature in the 70s, and a gentle zephyr of a breeze.

A great day to head for the few open fields that remain in the Big Woods to find butterflies on the wing. The fields were portions of a few farms that had once existed in what is now an extensive area of woodland.

The first field I came to is akin to a savanna, a grassland with a scattering of good sized open-grown trees. Although the ground is covered with grass, there’s also a lot of wild bergamot and various species of low-growing flowers. The tubular flowers of wild bergamot contain an abundance of nectar which, in turn, attracts many butterflies.

Although there were a lot of butterflies, there were only three species represented –

Along with the butterflies, a snowberry clearwing moth flew from flower to flower seeking nectar –

It was time to head for the other old field. Along the way there were several other interesting insects: a male widow skimmer dragonfly –

And a giant resin bee, an introduced species that’s larger than a bumblebee –

The second old field had a lot of milkweed, but that had bloomed weeks ago and seed pods were forming. In bloom was yarrow, an abundance of low white clover and Virginia mountain mint

There were butterflies, different species than in the first field. Here there were northern pearly-eyes and pearl crescents –

But the most abundant species was the eastern tailed-blue, a tiny butterfly with wings that are bright blue on top and dull white with dark speckles below –

As I left the field and walked through a patch of woodland, something caught my eye – it was a luna moth, one of the native moths whose populations have been decimated by the tachinid flies that were introduced in an effort to control the gypsy moth. Luna moths are extremely few and far between now, but here was one down in the grass –

A closer look revealed that it wasn’t just one luna moth but two that were in the process of making more luna moths –

Look at the antennae on these two moths: the closer moth is the male with more feathery antennae, the female has smaller antennae. Those antennae aren’t “feelers”, they’re actually scent receptors. The male’s antennae allow him to find the female by following her scent (pheromones).

These are the only mating luna moths I’ve ever found and, in-spite of the fact that both moths have lived a hard life as evidenced by their battered wings, they made my day.

The Moths that Think They're Hummingbirds

Or perhaps hummingbirds actually think they’re moths. Day-flying moths apparently evolved about 100 million years ago, so hummingbird moths almost certainly appeared long, long before hummingbirds came on the scene. Both can hover, both feed on nectar from flowers with deep tubes and both fly during daylight, a classic case of what’s called convergent evolution – where two quite different creatures evolved to occupy similar niches in the environment.

Along the edge of the field where I was walking there was a large clump of wild bergamot –

Virtually any time I see a significant grouping of wild bergamot in bloom there are one or more hummingbird moths feeding from the flowers –

Although there are a number of moth species that are called hummingbird moths, here we’re talking about my favorites – the hummingbird clearwing moths, moths that have transparent cells in their wings. There are two species of hummingbird clearwing moths in the northeast that, at first glance, look almost identical –

The two species are the hummingbird clearwing moth –

And the snowberry clearwing moth –

As mentioned, the two species aren’t readily told apart; to differentiate them use these clues –

The larvae of both species feed on the leaves of dogbane, viburnums and honeysuckles and overwinter as pupae in the soil and leaf litter.

These moths evolved to mimic hummingbirds and bumblebees, apparently to aid in avoiding predators. Few predators can catch a hummingbird and few would want to catch a bumblebee.

One Morning - One Lens

One fine morning early in the summer when I headed out to forest and field I decided to take my camera and but one lens. Those of you who are photographers probably know that there’s a lens for every purpose: telephotos for far away subjects or small birds, wide angles for scenic panoramas, macro for close-ups of tiny subjects like insects, etc. – until you have quite a collection.

As you may know, I use Olympus (now OM Systems) cameras and lenses that are smaller and lighter than gear from the more well known camera manufacturers. My favorite camera is the Olympus OM-1 and my favorite lens is the 40-150mm f/2.8 which is often coupled with a 1.4x teleconverter. This combination allows for a focal length range of 40-210mm – the equivalent of an 80-420mm lens on a Canon, Nikon or Sony camera. Plus the OM-1 camera has a very good internal 2.0x digital teleconverter that doubles the previous numbers.

Now a single lens would normally be thought of as limiting, but I decided to give it a try since this lens focuses as close as 2¼ feet (0.7 meter) and it could, therefore, produce close-ups of flowers and insects.

So off we went, the camera and lens and me.

First came a surprise, an osprey on top of a dead tree far from any lake or river, in a dull gray sky –

Next up, actually down on the forest floor, a ghostly indian-pipe in bloom –

And nearby the fading flower of an indian cucumber-root –

The route through the woodland was along an old woods road –

To the side of the old road there’s a dying tree with a large cavity in which a barred owl has spent the daylight hours –

A dead hemlock had several of the fungi called varnish conks –

One tree dies and another begins to take its place; in this case a white pine seedling –

On I went to leave the woods and walk into an old field with a lot of common milkweed. On that milkweed there were butterflies – a lot of great spangled fritillaries –

And a few small skippers –

Toward the edge of the field was a flash of color in the form of another butterfly, a red-spotted purple –

Unfortunately, birds were scarce so there were no other bird photos on this day. The morning was pleasant; the lens is a gem that is in many ways a jack-of-all-trades and is my favorite lens.

The Lazy Hazy Days of Summer

It was over 60 years ago now when H and I drove to Texas where I was to enter the US Army and begin training as an assistant surgeon. On our first day in Texas the temperature was 114º in the shade – what little of that there was. And so it went the entire time I was in training in classrooms with no air conditioning. This was in the very early years of the Vietnam War and, fortunately, I never had to use any of my surgical “skills”.

A couple of years before that I’d been in the Mojave Dessert when it was 128º and there was NO shade. It was on that day when I almost picked up, with my bare hand, a beautiful blue wasp with orange wings known as a tarantula hawk  – these wasps are reported to have the second most painful sting of any insect (second only to that of the South American bullet ant) – luckily I didn’t just grab it.

These two experiences cemented my disdain for hot weather, and 52 years of working outdoors year-round reinforced that feeling every summer.

A lot of folks who live in air conditioned houses, ride in air conditioned vehicles and work in air conditioned environments express a liking for hot weather, I just don’t know what’s wrong with them.

In early July we had the hottest weather we’ve had in years as shown by the thermometer outside our kitchen window –

I know some of you suffer through even hotter days, but that was quite enough, actually more than enough, for us.

Those miserable temperatures are brought to us by southerly or southwesterly winds that also fill the air with crud of all sorts resulting in a haze that makes my eyes sting, this year that crud was augmented by smoke from Canadian wildfires –

The heat’s hard on wildlife too: Birds birds try, just a dogs do, to lower their body temperature by panting –

Deer cool their heels –

While bears, with their coat of thick black hair, often wallow in water to cool off –

It may be two months, or more, until consistently cool weather returns. But the changing climate brought on by our use of fossil fuels is, year by year little by little, pushing that cooling ever further off.