Midsummer Prairie - But Where Are the Bees and Butterflies?

Yesterday I took a long, leisurely walk through prairie and oak savanna habitats in Carleton College's Cowling Arboretum. It was a day that seemed to presage autumn, with moderate temperatures and a good breeze pushing clouds that occasionally looked stormy, though we got no rain.

Compass plant is the tallest flower on the scene, routinely reaching
 5-6' or more.

Lush mix of grasses and flowering plants

I think this is hoary vervain (Verbena
 stricta).  I'm sure someone will let me know if it's not.

Purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea) and grasses blowing in the wind

But where were the bees and butterflies? Granted, it was a windy day, which probably accounts for a good part of the quiet, but at least low down among the thick stems I would have expected to see the landscape busy with insect activity -- but I barely saw any.

In fact, I've seen very few butterflies or bees at all this year. At home, my flowering thyme, bee balm and Joe Pye weed should be humming with bees, but I've seen only a couple here and there, and a couple of butterflies. There are many factors at play, including our cold spring, but something certainly doesn't feel right.

On the Fence: Birds on Fences and Fence Posts

An upland sandpiper standing tall atop a fence post became one of my favorite recurring sights on our June trip to North and South Dakota.

Upland Sandpiper, South Dakota

Fences and their posts are good resting, singing, observing, grooming and hunting perches for a whole range of birds. Here are some more birds on fences in South Dakota, where we had the photographic luxury of ample time, empty roads, lots of fences, plenty of birds, and some spectacular backgrounds.

Western Meadowlark, South Dakota

Northern Flicker, South Dakota

Swainson's Hawk, South Dakota

Western Kingbird, South Dakota

Western Meadowlark, South Dakota

Lark Bunting, South Dakota

And one more Upland Sandpiper, South Dakota

Viceroy Butterfly

When Dave and I saw a couple of orange butterflies flitting near us on the access driveway while we were checking the bluebird nestboxes on our prairie trail on Sunday, we were excited, thinking they were monarch butterflies. Monarchs, of course, have seen precipitous declines over the last few years due to a variety of factors including reduced availability of their essential food, milkweed.

Being the careful reporter I try to be, and knowing that there is another butterfly that looks very like the monarch, I did a little research before posting these photos. And it was a good thing I did, because this is a viceroy butterfly, not a monarch.

Here (below) is a photo of an actual monarch that was visiting the purple coneflowers in our front yard in 2010:

The monarch has more large light spots on the leading edges of its forewings and more small spots along the trailing edges of its wings, and the viceroy has a narrow line across its hindwings, which the monarch does not have and which is probably the easiest field mark to go by. The monarch also has pale lines across its body, while in the top photo of the viceroy, above, you barely even notice the uniformly dark body. The monarch is also slightly larger than the viceroy, but the difference is hard to tell without a side-by-side comparison in the field.

Viceroys feed on poplar, cottonwood and willow trees, and like the monarchs have (relatively recently) been found to be distasteful to bird predators, due at least in part to their bodies' retention of the salicylic acid found in their food. Their similarity to the monarch is now being argued to be a likely example of Müllerian mimicry, with each unpalatable species benefiting from its similarity to the other, rather than Batesian mimicry, where a palatable or nondangerous species benefits from its similarity to a unpalatable or dangerous species. (For more on the mimicry issue, see http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2011/05/mutual-mimicry-viceroy-monarch.)

In my research I came across a wonderful Minnesota nature blog I hadn't discovered before: Backyard Biology, authored by a mother-daughter pair (one a recently retired biology professor and the other a former biology major, nurse, and at-home mom). Their viceroy-monarch comparison appears here. They've recently been writing about the importance of prairies, as I have, with beautiful photos. Check it out.

Dragonfly at McKnight Prairie - Summer

How about a little respite from winter? I just found this draft post, which I'd started last summer. I was fascinated by the clear wings on this dragonfly that we spotted at the McKnight Prairie, and I spent time trying to identify it but never arrived at an answer. The dragonfly identification site I found didn't give an option for a clear-winged insect with a brown, tan or reddish abdomen, so I was at a loss. All ye odonata enthusiasts, feel free to chime in!

Glorious Late Summer in the Arb

I took a wonderful 4+ mile walk this morning around much of the Long Loop of the Lower Arb at Carleton College's Arboretum. I only had my phone for a camera, but here is a taste of the late summer views.

Meadow yellow with goldenrod

Big Bluestem prairie grass, also known as Turkey Foot (see why?)

I was glad to see monarch butterflies on the liatris

Bur oak acorns on the grassy path, crunchy underfoot

Wild grapes looked ripe

We've got at least a week of seriously hot weather ahead. The early morning is a good time to get outside and take in the colors of late summer. Stay hydrated and don't overdo it!

May Birding Notes on Patch

Female ruby-throated hummingbird

My monthly Northfield Patch blog post, May Birding Notes, is now live. This month's edition discusses hummingbirds, orioles, bluebirds, sparrows, swallows, tanagers, warblers, hawks and vultures. May 6 was our first day this year to see both hummingbirds and orioles, and on May 12 I saw my first-ever orchard oriole in a large oak in the Carleton Arboretum.

Here's a preview:

Most of the spring bird migration has occurred, with a big last push expected this coming week. Our summer avian residents are now here. Here are some recent birding observations in and around Northfield:

Hummingbirds: We put out our hummingbird feeder at the beginning of the month, and I first noticed a hummingbird on May 6. Lately we have been seeing females numerous times a day, but sometimes also a male. The ruby-throated hummingbird is the only hummingbird to be expected in this part of the country. If you see one with a pale throat, it is the female. The irridescent red throat of the male can sometimes look purple or black, depending on the light.

Read the rest here.

Late Summer in the Arb

All of the photos get much bigger if you click on them.

A walk through the northern half of the Lower Arb (Carleton College's Cowling Arboretum) this morning revealed a variety of late-summer scenes. In the wooded areas, we were pestered by mosquitoes if we stopped for even a moment or two to listen to a bird or decide which branch in the path to take. In the open prairie areas, butterflies and dragonflies flitted through the tall grasses and wildflowers. In one shaded area we counted a cluster of at least nine monarch butterflies.I love this top photo -- I didn't realize when I took it what an interesting sky there was behind this tall, sturdy, yellow-flowered plant (I'm not sure what it is, but it looks as if it may be in the sunflower family.)

Butterflies seem to love this flower (see also below), which I believe is one of the species of blazing star (Liatris).

A mix of prairie plants. Many of the grasses were taller than me (I'm around 5'2").

Light filtered in a lovely way through a stand of tall, slender trees as we neared the northern end of the Long Loop trail, returning to the small parking area near the old iron bridge on Canada Avenue.

Seen Overhead

Tree swallows and one barn swallow on a line.All the tree swallows seem to be busy grooming themselves.

Another Dark Swallowtail

My son and I drove out to Union Lake, just west of the interstate, today to see what birds might be out and about. From there we went on through Lonsdale, about halfway to New Prague, and then circled up through Elko New Market and back via rural roads. We caught a great blue heron hanging out next to a lone white pelican (too far away to get a photo). We saw a double-crested cormorant and plenty of gulls and pigeons. We saw a large hawk on a line overhead, and lots and lots of tree swallows also on lines. A small number of killdeer, some Canada geese, and a few quick, darting songbirds here and there completed the picture.

Probably the most memorable spot of the day was not avian, but lepidopteral.I caught a glimpse of something black and ragged-looking fluttering among the roadside clovers and wildflowers and pulled over to take a closer look. I wasn't even quite sure whether it was a bird or a butterfly, it was so large, but it turned out to be a huge black butterfly with blue hind wings. The sun was shining on my LCD display so that I could hardly see whether I'd captured it in the photos or not, and as you'll see the focus isn't great.

As I first saw it - huge and very black. Those are large clover blossoms!

Here you can see the blue hindwings and a hint of the swallow-type tail

I was able to get quite close to take this photo

I thought this butterfly seemed much blacker and to have more blue on its tail than the female dark-form eastern tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) I recently blogged about. The ragged-edged appearance of the wings from a distance proved to be due to the spots/checks that form the wing borders.

As I first researched other similar butterflies I thought it might be a spicebush swallowtail (Papilio troilus) because of that larger blue area. But as I looked at more and more sources, I came to the conclusion that this is indeed another of the same. Features that convinced me included the orange spots at the base of the hind wings and where the hind wing meets the fore wing on each side, and the yellowish color of the spots at the edge of the hind wings, compared to a cooler almost blue tone to those spots in the P. troilus. Of course, then I compared the range maps and saw that it was much less likely to have been the P. troilus, which doesn't seem to extend past Wisconsin into Minnesota. So there you have it.

Recent Observations (Early August Phenology)

I haven't been keeping systematic records, so what follows is a fairly random set of observations about what's been going on lately. My last report of general observations was made in mid-June.

Red-breasted Nuthatch last winter

I commented then that we had last seen a red-breasted nuthatch on May 29. I don't think we saw any in June, but we have spotted one several times since mid-July. Based on maps of historical sightings available on eBird.org, it looks as if June sightings of red-breasted nuthatches this far south in Minnesota are quite rare, while July and August sightings are somewhat more common. The red-breasteds mainly breed to our north, and not at all in the southwestern part of Minnesota.

Our 1987 edition of Robert Janssen's Birds in Minnesota shows the breeding range as extending no further south than the Twin Cities, with the fall migration period starting probably mid-August, and the Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America shows the year-round range in Minnesota extending not much beyond the arrowhead region of northeastern Minnesota. The bird checklists from the Cowling Arboretum in Northfield and River Bend Nature Center in Faribault show the red-breasted nuthatch to be rarely reported in fall, winter, and spring, and not observed in summer. All these sources indicate that it is not historically common to find a red-breasted nuthatch in Rice County in the summer months, so we are excited to have done so.

Hairy Woodpecker

We haven't seen an oriole for several weeks. Common visitors to the bird feeders lately have included downy and (less often) hairy woodpeckers, blue jays, house finches, goldfinches, and chickadees. Mourning doves and chipping sparrows come for millet put out on our front walk. We have not been troubled by grackles or brown-headed cowbirds recently (in mid-June I reported grackles as our most common visitors). We don't often notice hummingbirds, though I did see one about a week ago. One day Dave saw six blue jays at the various feeders or in the nearby maple tree at the same time; usually we see only one or two.

On July 18 three baby raccoons appeared on our deck. One was seen again soon after on our front step. I haven't seen them since.

Baby raccoon

We have not been going out birding -- it's been so warm and humid that the idea has not been inviting. Summer isn't a peak time for our birding activities anyway, with the trees heavily leafed out, obscuring the view, but it can be fun to see turtles and families of young wood ducks in secluded ponds. After many humid days in the upper 80s and lower 90s, we are looking forward with relief to the coming week's forecast of a string of days with highs in the 70s and lows reaching down into the 50s.

Monarch and eastern tiger swallowtail butterflies have been common on our purple coneflowers the last several weeks. Joe-pye weed is also in bloom, and may be attracting them. Although I reported an early coneflower in mid-June (one that was closer to the house than most), most were not in full flower until July. 

Tiger Swallowtail

The last few days I have noticed that our garden phlox is flowering. I haven't kept records of that before.

Our half-hearted, late-started, much-neglected vegetable garden is in horrible condition. The six or so tomato plants look lush, but the swings between a cool June and extreme heat in the third week of July (up to 99 F. here, I believe, with outrageous dew points, putting the heat index well above 110) have limited the fruit production and certainly also limited my garden-upkeep efforts. I have picked a total of three cherry tomatoes (I think they are Super Sweet 100s); that plant has some more that are ripening, but nothing else is close to being ripe. I never got around to putting down a straw mulch, and the bed has been overtaken by tall grass. My attempt at bush beans succumbed to rabbits or other nibblers, and then got smothered by the grass. I have some cucumber plants that are growing well now, but not yet setting fruit. I have been cutting chives and basil for use in the kitchen, and we have a lot of lemon thyme and sage, but nothing else is producing.

I noticed my first flying geese of the season within the last week or two. There were some still-fuzzy half-grown goslings on the river not too long ago, suggesting a second hatching of the season.

Yellow Swallowtail - Dark Morph

A few days ago I posted photos of a female eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly. I learned that while the males are always yellow, the females can be either yellow with some distinctive blue markings, or very dark. A couple of days ago we saw one of the dark females. They have the same blue spots as the yellow-form females, and although they are indeed dark, the wings are translucent when the sun is behind them, creating an interesting effect.

The swallowtails seem very attracted to the purple coneflowers that are growing in our front flowerbed. 

Hairy Woodpecker

Hairy woodpecker (probably female - no red spot visible)

Hairy woodpecker - strong tail feathers brace the bird at the feeder

I've often seen downy woodpeckers at our peanut or suet feeders, but much less often noticed the very similar but larger hairy woodpecker. Both are year-round residents in much of the United States and Canada. This morning a loud, sharp call drew my attention and I saw a hairy woodpecker going after peanuts.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology describes the hairy as "a medium-sized woodpecker with a fairly square head, a long, straight, chisel-like bill, and stiff, long tail feathers to lean against on tree trunks. The bill is nearly the same length as the head." At 7-10" long, the hairy can be about one-third again the size of the smaller downy, though size alone can be difficult to base an identification on.

Male downy woodpecker, for comparison

The relative bill length is also a good way to distinguish the two: the downy's bill is much shorter in comparison with the depth of the bird's head, only about half that length, while the hairy's more formidable bill is about as long as its head is deep, as noted in the quote above.

Midsummer Flowers

There is a fine tangle of purple coneflowers, day lilies and ox-eye daisies in our front garden bed just now. We've seen goldfinches clinging to the coneflowers, and butterflies like them too.

Return of the Dark Brown Ducks

Two years ago I noticed a dark brown duck with a mottled whitish front to its neck hanging out with the local mallards on the river in downtown Northfield. It was suggested to me that it might be a domestic Swedish duck or a cross with one (here's a photo from another source, FowlBlog.com, that looks quite similar). Last summer I saw it again, or another very like it.

A couple of days ago I saw two of them, snoozing on the eastern bank near a lot of mallards (above). They were very sleepy, so I didn't get a shot of one with its head up, but you get the general idea. If you click on the photo, you'll be able to see it much, much larger.

Here are some of the other ducks that were in the vicinity. It was nap time for most.

Blue Jays in Summer

We haven't been seeing so much of the colorful birds we had at the feeders a few weeks ago, but the blue jays have been regulars at the whole-peanut wreath feeder lately, at least when we keep nuts in the feeder (they don't last very long). Sometimes they pull out a whole nut in its shell quite quickly, but other times (or perhaps it's other birds) they work on it for minutes at a time -- always wary, looking around every couple of seconds in between tries. If pulling the whole thing out doesn't work, sometimes they peck at a shell until it breaks apart and they are able to extract the nut within.

The video below shows a jay working at just keeping its balance on the swaying feeder, but it soon grabs a nut and flies away.

Recent Observations (mid-June Phenology)

In no particular order, here are some recent Northfield-area nature and garden notes. All of the photos have large originals that can be seen if you click on the small images.

We last saw a red-breasted nuthatch at our feeders on May 29. I noted about two weeks earlier that each time I saw one I expected it to be the last time for the season. We've not seen any pine siskins, also mentioned in the post of two weeks ago, for quite a while either.

We've seen fewer songbirds and hummingbirds at the feeders as hatching insects and blooming flowers have offered more nutritional variety. It's my understanding that even birds that prefer seeds or fruit at some times of the year tend to feed insects to their hatchlings, due to the higher protein content. The grackles are becoming our most common visitors, enjoying the sunflower seeds, grape jelly and peanuts we put out with other birds in mind.

Weigela

One of the flowering shrubs that may be attracting the hummingbirds away from the feeder is our red Weigela bush, now in full flower. It's at a corner of the house that's not overlooked by any of our windows, so we don't have much opportunity to watch to see if the hummers are going there, but this bush is mentioned by a variety of sources as being very attractive to hummingbirds.

"Baby" crows are very comical -- as large as their parents and quite formidable-looking but bleating pitifully to be fed. We've heard them often and occasionally seen them near the house.

Purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea)

I noticed my first purple coneflower in bloom yesterday. Last year I noted on June 27 that they had been blooming for the previous week or so, but I'm pretty sure I meant they had been widely in bloom for that period of time. The oxeye daisies have also started blooming, though most are not yet out.

Small acorns

The oak tree next to our house has formed lots of small, green acorns. I haven't paid much attention in the past to the timing of acorn production, so I can't tell you how this compares to the second week of June in other years.

Chives

 We all know it's been a mainly cool and rainy spring, slowing down both farmers and home gardeners from getting their planting done. We bought vegetable plants Mother's Day weekend and had them under lights inside until last weekend, when we finally got enough garden space cleared to put in seven tomato plants and some broccoli (we lost our pepper plants when the cats got at them), just in time for the dry, windy heat wave straight from Arizona that brought the temperature into the low 100s by some readings.

Sage in flower

We hadn't done a good job of hardening off our plants beforehand, and several of them look terribly stressed, even though the cool, damp weather returned quickly. The perennial herbs in the bed are doing fine, though. The chives are nearing the end of their bloom and the sage has just started blooming. We also have a much larger patch of lemon thyme this year, which I didn't realize would come back on its own.

Cottonwood seeds on deck

The cottonwood seed fluff has really picked up today and is drifting lazily down, occasionally swirling in the breeze, and sticking to the deck, which is wet from a light rain sprinkle. This is about a week later than I wrote a post on "cottonwood snow" in 2009.