northeast-flora-and-fauna

I see lots of male Blue Dashers but see females less frequently. I think this is a female. Certainly there's no pruinose , the eyes are brown rather than the blue-green of adult males, the end of the abdomen doesn't appear to have "claspers" [1], and the abdomen looks shorter than I usually see on Blue Dashers. Of course, immature males can have reddish-brown eyes and lack pruinose while claspers can be a little hard to see and abdomen length is a somewhat subjective field mark. For contrast, here's one that I convinced myself to be an immature male. I'm not sure why I see so many presumably male Blue Dashers and relatively few females, though the territorial nature of the males is presumably a factor. Rather than spending almost all their time eating prey and hiding from predators until they're ready to mate like the females, the males aggressively defend territories near water where I know to look for them. Perhaps while the females are discreetly chow

Did you know that bees drink water? Below are some Western Honeybees slurping up some water from a puddle that frequently forms in one of the lower areas of the Sourland Mountain Preserve.  You might think that they can get all the water they need from nectar, which is basically just sugary water. But that's not really the case; they actually need more water than that. Social bees like the honeybees can also carry water back home, either for non-foraging bees to consume or to air condition their nest . I've heard of people who try and provide a water source for bees, maybe using a pan with marbles in it and water a little below the tops of the marbles. I actually tried that once when I was still working and when I came home most of the marbles had been knocked out of the pan. (I'm sure an animal much larger than bees did that, probably accidentally. My leading suspects were squirrels, stray cats, or birds.) Did you know that bees use morning dew as a water source? If you&#

This post demonstrates the extremely different looks that Red Admiral butterflies can present to the world. (Being fairly common yet attention-getting, I've shown them before, like here and here .) Today I want to demonstrate how they can (not so magically) disappear. The trick is in the color pattern of the top and bottom of their wings. When you see the tops of the wings, you see a mostly-black butterfly with vibrant orange lines and sharply contrasting white spots. July 5, 2022 at Duke Farms Photo 221312289, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) But when it raises its wings, abracadabra, it's disappeared! Okay, it hasn't quite disappeared, but it sure blends in with a dirt-stick-leaf background, doesn't it? July 5, 2022 at Duke Farms Photo 221312326, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) Although not closely related to the Red Admiral, our Eastern Comma and Question Mark butterflies also have earthy-looking underwings. Sometimes I'm follow

In July I spotted this Red-eared Slider walking around. As I've discussed before , Red-eared Sliders are a subspecies of Pond Slider , and with a name like that you generally see them in, on, or adjacent to water. So what's the turtle doing out of the water? Well, I can't rule out that the turtle simply felt it needed to find a better habitat. If a body of water gets polluted, or is drying out, or is simply too crowded, some intrepid turtles will look for a better place to live, even if it means journeying on land. Having said that, there is another time when female turtles absolutely need to leave the water. All turtles, even ones that will spend most of their lives in the water, need to lay eggs on land. I wouldn't be surprised if that's what's going on here. I considered following the turtle, though it's possible that a turtle looking to lay eggs would not do so if I were around. This is the 2nd time that I suspect I met a future mom Red-eared Slider . J

With iNaturalist down - they say "iNat will be back on its feet/wings/fins/tentacles/pseudopodia as soon as possible" - I'll dip into one of my other pictures for today's topic. Like many places, Duke Farms has invasive plants that they'd prefer to replace with native ones. One of my volunteer assignments - Trail Steward - is involved in cutting back some of these plants. Though plants like Japanese Honeysuckle , Japanese Barberry , Burning Bush , and Wineberry get a fair amount of attention, Multiflora Rose is frequently our main target. Although sometimes we've replanted other stuff after removing the invasive ones, many times we just cut the invasives down and hope it gives other species the opportunity to replace the invasive ones. Below is a picture of some of the invasives back in July. My impression is that these get hauled to a part of the property closed to the public, and after getting good and dried out they mulch it up. The mulch is then used to

Here's a pretty good shot of an Eastern Tailed-blue , though you could be forgiven for thinking they're more of a violet-blue in color. Although you can quibble with the shade of blue, the blueness that's there says that this is a male; the females tend to look gray instead. In flight you'll see this blue coloring flashing since the underwing is mostly a slightly speckled white. (The underwing also has a little orange spot, though I doubt you'll pick that up in flight. You can see what the underwings are like in the picture here .) They can be confused with the Spring/Summer Azures . The best ways to distinguish the Eastern Tailed-blue from them are: The azures don't have the little "tails" on their rear wings. When their wings are up, the azures shouldn't show the little orange markings of an ETB. (Distinguishing the Spring Azure from the Summer Azure is something I can only do based on the season.) Although neat looking, these are pretty small b

While Eastern Bluebirds are spotted in central NJ fairly often, this time I got a picture of juvenile Eastern Bluebirds. Though there's some blue plumage that's come in, they have the white speckles of a juvenile. Their thrush cousins, the American Robin , also look speckly as juveniles; presumably this is better camouflage than adult plumage. Though they have a fair number of thrush relatives, their closest relatives, the Western Bluebird and the Mountain Bluebird , live on other parts of the continent. One of the biggest challenges for bluebirds is to find a place to nest. As cavity nesters, nesting boxes are a good substitute for the tree cavities that used to exist when this area was mostly forest. Duke Farms provides nesting boxes for bluebirds, and my understanding is that the bluebirds on the property successfully raised an above average number of kids this summer.  July 6, 2022 at Duke Farms Photo 221313845, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

At Duke Farms they're working to identify and label more of their trees and shrubs. When I saw the sign I figured I'd wander over and see whether they had planted an American Sycamore or a London Planetree ; the 2 (related) trees look very similar. Imagine my surprise when I read the sign saying that this was a Ginkgo tree. This wasn't a misidentification - this time - on my part. The smooth, patchy-white bark clearly indicates some sort of sycamore [1]. So what happened? The first thing to realize is that there was a fairly large Ginkgo tree a short distance away, and the sign was no doubt intended for that tree. There is a small chance that some Duke Farms visitor really thought that the sycamore was a Ginkgo tree and tried to be helpful by moving the sign. Far more likely though is that this was intended as a practical joke.  As jokes go, it probably doesn't work well: Some people who know virtually nothing about trees might be fooled, but fooling these folks isn&

In the summer baseball fans might find themselves watching with interest the pennant races ; some naturalists might be watching an entirely different kind of pennant race. You see, by July the Halloween Pennants and the Calico Pennants will be racing after potential mates, racing after intended meals, and chasing away potential rivals; flying around rapidly is one of the most time-consuming activities for our pennants . (Admittedly perching on vegetation and looking for mates, prey, and rivals also takes up a lot of time.) If my recollection is correct, I found both these dragonflies at Duke Farms Great Meadow, though the Halloween Pennants were mostly near Gingko Lane while the Calico Pennants were deeper into the meadow towards the Redbud trees leading to the Old Foundation. It's not clear that these are different habitats, so I suspect it's mostly just chance that the HPs picked one part of the meadow and the CPs picked the other. The Halloween Pennant is a bit bigger; I s

Toads are always a welcome amphibian encounter when outdoors, so I was happy to meet this Fowler's Toad . I don't run into a lot of them a lot, though I suspect they'll sometimes catch some valuable sunlight by venturing out onto trails and roads.  I've gone into details on identifying these toads, so read this if you're trying to distinguish Fowler's Toads from their very similar American Toad cousins. If you can't get a good look and need to guess, I do think there are more Fowler's Toads in this area; the actuarial tables suggest that you saw a Fowler. But don't feel too cocky; there are plenty of American Toads around too. While this is clearly an adult toad, I did meet a young toadlet a year or so ago. As is typical, the toad started off like it was going to hop away, but then stopped and let me get pictures. July 2, 2022 at Duke Farms Photo 221312132, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

This is probably an Orchard Orbweaver in my picture. Based on the pictures in my spider field guide, I thought it looked more like a Basilica Orbweaver , but based on iNaturalist feedback and some online pictures I'm now pretty confident this is the Orchard Orbweaver. I have to admit that spider identification isn't easy for me: Many spiders are small , making it difficult to see details even with my camera's magnification. My Six-spotted Fishing Spider and Yellow Garden Spiders are reasonably good size, but they're the exceptions. My field guide generally documents their sizes in millimeters, and you'd probably be surprised how many spiders we have that are under a centimeter in size. I can attach an extra magnification lens to my camera, though getting the camera to focus is harder. It needs to be manually focused, and if I sway slightly closer or further from the spider I can lose that focus. (I have better success if I'm able to lean or brace myself again

Sometimes you get a pretty good picture of a bird but can't get a definitive identification. When I saw this bird I got an Eastern Phoebe vibe, probably because they're one of the flycatchers I see the most. (I also see quite a few Eastern Kingbirds , but their sharp dark-and-white plumage contrast immediately ruled them out.) Usually when I post these to iNaturalist , I have a pretty good idea of what the animal is, and usually iNaturalist confirms my identification with its identification suggestions. On this particular day, however, the iNaturalist suggestions weren't working, so I just went with my initial thought. I was a little surprised to see responses suggesting smaller but similar-looking flycatchers. When this happens, I do what I normally do: I post the picture to the What's This Bird FB page , run by the American Birding Association. Though I've sometimes seen some spirited debates there, almost all the time they settle on an identification pretty quic

Here's a bird I hadn't seen in a while before meeting one late this June, a Common Yellowthroat . The yellowthroats are a genus of warbler, and despite my field guide's views on their abundance (and despite their name) this is only the 4th picture I've gotten of them [1]. And even if they're fairly common, my Sibley field guide describes them as "secretive" while the All About Birds webpage accuses them of "skulking". Fortunately this fella was desperate enough for companionship that he was singing right out in the open. I've had even worse luck with relatives of the Common Yellowthroat. Even though Kentucky Warblers potentially breed around here, and Mourning Warblers will at least migrate through the region, I've yet to get a picture of either. (While both those birds are categorized as yellowthroats, only the Kentucky Warbler has as yellow a throat as the Common Yellowthroat; the throats of the Mourning Warbler seem to go gray by ad

Here's a turtle that I virtually never see with other turtles, the mostly-terrestrial Eastern Box Turtle . Similar to there being shorebirds that are pretty indifferent to shores (see Killdeer ), the Eastern Box Turtle is technically a member of the pond turtle family despite living a life like that of their more distant relatives the tortoises . Their high, boxy-looking shells are responsible for their name. The Eastern Box Turtle isn't a species of turtle; it's a subspecies. The species is called the Common Box Turtle , and it comprises the EBT and 5 other subspecies. The term "box turtle" refers to a genus .  As members of the pond turtle family, EBTs can technically swim, but they don't do it well or willingly. You won't do an EBT any favors by putting it in water, but it won't be a death sentence either. If they could talk, I suspect you'd get an expletive-filled tongue-lashing from it. I found this fella when it was hiking through Research W

Though flower flies, moths, and butterflies are all pollinators, perhaps the classic pollinators are the bees. And in central New Jersey the most commonly seen bees are the Western Honey Bees and the bumble bees , with the Common Eastern Bumble Bee being the most frequently seen bumblebee. These 2 types of bees are fairly closely related, both residing in the same insect subfamily . Generally speaking you can tell them apart because honeybees tend to be thinner, less hairy, and with a clear distinction between the head and thorax, while bumblebees tend to be rounder, quite hairy, and it's hard to tell where the thorax ends and the head begins. There is a key difference between the way bees pollinate and the way butterflies and moths pollinate. Butterflies and moths are just looking to drink nectar and only accidentally transport pollen from plant-to-plant. Bees on the other hand will drink nectar but will also purposely transport pollen back to their nest to be eaten, though so

Two of the soggier places in my area are Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge and Lord Stirling Park, the latter being a county park that's part of the same ecosystem as Great Swamp. Both are about as dry as I've ever seen them. Great Swamp has a boardwalk that normally takes you through some pretty swampy areas; this month it mostly looked dry as I peered over the sides. As expected, Lord Stirling Park was no better; below is a picture of their Lily Pad Pond. Admittedly it still looks muddy there, but usually water would be covering this whole area. (I never appreciated just how shallow this pond was, though I suppose the abundance of lily pads should have told me that it wasn't very deep.) Lily Pad Pond August 3, 2022 at Lord Stirling Park Here's another sign of the drought. Upon entering Duke Farms you'll usually see a small waterfall. There are plenty of times in a normal summer when the waterfall becomes more of a water trickle, but it's rare for the falls

Back in June I met a couple families of Canada Geese . These pictures were taken on the same day and at the same location (Washington Valley Reservoir), but one set of goslings was clearly more mature than the other. In the 1st picture the goslings are far smaller than their parental unit and are a nearly uniformly gray in color. June 28, 2022 at Washington Valley Reservoir Photo 211849901, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) In the next picture the juveniles are much closer to the adult in size and have the feather markings of an adult (though those markings look slightly washed out). If I had seen these juveniles in the absence of an adult, I might have interpreted them as adults and attributed the duller color to bad lighting. June 28, 2022 at Washington Valley Reservoir Photo 211850102, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) Clearly these 2 goose families weren't on exactly the same breeding schedule.

I've been surprised at how often while walking by a birdhouse a Tree Swallow will poke its head out to check out who/what is walking by. This is no doubt because, among birds approximately the size of an Eastern Bluebird [1], the Tree Swallow combines both the feistiness to claim a birdhouse and the abundance to occupy a lot of them. While I've implied they poke their heads out because they're nosy, I have to acknowledge that they've claimed a box to raise their children in, and you could view them as concerned parents participating in a neighborhood watch program. However you interpret their actions, it's kind of neat to see a little head poking out of the birdhouses as you go by. July 17, 2022 at Duke Farms Photo 222062634, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) [1] My understanding is that most of the birdhouses in my area were put up for use by Eastern Bluebirds, though larger boxes might be intended for American Kestrels , Wood Ducks , etc.

Here's someone I didn't tell you about earlier because I didn't initially have an ID for it, and then when an iNaturalist provided me with an ID, I had moved on to other pictures. A more recent sighting of this species jogged my memory about this spider. This is almost certainly a Six-spotted Fishing Spider , and while you might think it was named for the smallish white spots on its back, it's actually named for 6 black spots on its belly. As happens all too often, the characteristic that leads to its name works poorly as a field mark (see Ring-necked Duck ). As the name suggests, these spiders will catch (small) fish, but they're not especially picky eaters. If you're a small enough animal of any sort, you're probably on the menu. And of course if you're going to catch fish, you need to be pretty good around water. The SSFS can walk on the surface of the water or walk under the water. Because it can trap air in its abdominal hairs, it can breathe that a

Though this wasn't the first Green Heron I saw this season (that heron would be here ), this might be the best look I've gotten of one thus far this season. This was taken after one of the Farmers' Market events on a Sunday. I was snooping around the Rain Garden [1] when I saw something that (to paraphrase Yogi Bear) was "bigger than the average bird". Initially could barely see the heron, but eventually it emerged from dense foliage and I got some pretty good looks. Since the Rain Garden isn't (normally) connected to a larger body of water (Duke's Brook is closest), I doubt that there were any fish for the heron. I know there were frogs there though, and it probably has the ecosystem of a long-lived vernal pond. And the shallowness of the water during the drought probably makes it harder for any animals in there to hide from predators like herons. Green Herons are considered to be one of the relatively few tool-using birds. Don't expect them to be ru

Across from the Duke Farms Outdoor Education stand I spotted my first Eastern Amberwing of the season, and apparently it was a female. This surprised me a little bit since many times I'll see males emerge/develop first so they can squabble over territory, and after things have settled down a bit (which probably just means more orderly fighting) the females will emerge and hook up with the males with the best territories. (While we'd like to think that having a winning personality is important, female dragonflies seem to be pragmatists looking for the fittest males who control the best territories for laying eggs.) You might be wondering why this small brown dragonfly is called an "amberwing". As with many species, their name comes from the more flamboyantly colored males . When I saw this dragonfly I couldn't remember what the female Eastern Amberwings looked like, but the size (they're one of our smallest dragonflies) and shape looked about right. It wasn

Here's something I thought I had shown earlier in the summer, but apparently I overlooked them. For a little while in mid-June I was seeing Muskrats at Duke Farms, more specifically at Duke's Brook near the entrance. I suspect that Muskrats are fairly plentiful in central NJ even though I don't see them a lot. I'd probably have to skulk around freshwater wetlands with lots of vegetation to see them more, but even then their ability to swim underwater and to hide in vegetation would still make them challenging to spot. Prior to this, my last sighting of Muskrats was along the canal at the Raritan River Greenway. The last time I saw Muskrats at this location was nearly 5 years ago . It's conceivable that these are the same Muskrats since their life expectancy in the wild is in the 4-6 year range. It seems more likely that these are different Muskrats thought. June 16, 2022 at Duke Farms Photo 211722764, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

Here's a Northern Pearly-eye , another butterfly that may look familiar even though I haven't shown one before. They look pretty similar to the Appalachian Brown I posted about over the winter (though the picture was from August of 2021). The main difference is probably that the Northern Pearly-eye has a little white around its eyespot wing markings. As close as those two butterflies may be, the Northern Pearly-eye looks even more like the Southern Pearly-eye ; fortunately that species rarely shows up in NJ, since distinguishing between them would probably exceed my ability. Though my field guides and some online documentation put the browns ( Satyrodes ) and pearly-eyes ( Enodia ) in different genera, it looks like the Taxonomy Gods have now decided they both belong in the Lethe genus . I suspect that our relatively new ability to look at genetic codes triggers a lot of these rearrangements. Note that they got their name from the white inside most of their eyespots, which rem

This Northern Mockingbird appears to have found dinner, and it looks like caterpillar is on the menu. (At least it looks like a caterpillar; there's a small chance it's some other larval insect.) This seems to be pretty typical foraging behavior for the Northern Mockingbird, which will amble around on the ground in hopes of spotting some delicious insect. My guess is that this mockingbird hit the jackpot by finding a largish nutritious meal. Though usually mockingbirds will find stuff to eat while walking around, if they're perched on something and a meal walks by, they won't hesitate to fly down and eat it. This is also a reminder that while we think of most birds as cute, harmless animals, to the local invertebrates they are savage, remorseless predators. Perspective matters. June 16, 2022 at Duke Farms Photo 211723275, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

Back in June I encountered this Indigo Bunting hiking the "pipeline" trail at Sourland Mountain Preserve. Many times when I see an interesting animal in a spot, I'll specifically look for it on future visits [1]. Most of the time I fail to re-find the animal; on this day though it paid off. The previous year I also found an Indigo Bunting in approximately the same spot. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this is the same bunting, though it's possible there's a small community of them living off this trail. This is clearly considered acceptable habitat by the local Indigo Buntings. June 15, 2022 at Sourland Mountain Preserve Photo 210219267, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) [1] I don't know if this is in general a good strategy, a harmless habit, or a futile distraction. Results have been mixed.

Since I've been showing Great Spangled Fritillaries this week, for Throwback Thursday let's dip into the photography archives to show a cool-looking butterfly from the past, an American Copper  (aka Common Copper). While the name might make you think I'm talking about a member of a US constabulary , the coppers are a subfamily of generally small butterflies. Though one source claimed they are an introduced species, most sources suggest it's more of an international butterfly than an invasive one. Similar to the Red Admiral and Painted Lady , it appears to be native to not just North America but also Eurasia and much of Africa. Though the species may be found across much of the world, its numerous subspecies tend to be more localized. Though it's a fairly colorful butterfly it's easy to overlook due to its diminutive size. If you're familiar with the Spring/Summer Azures , they're approximately that size. When I got my pictures, I wasn't sure what

Here's a picture I got of a Woodchuck (aka Groundhog aka Whistle Pig) back in June. My recollection is that it was a hot day so my first impression was that the Woodchuck was panting to shed some internal heat. Apparently that's not the explanation; squirrels (Woodchucks are categorized as ground squirrels ) don't pant or sweat . Ears and tails help rodents cool off on hot days instead. And in something similar to sweat, they will sometimes lick themselves and cool off as the water evaporates. Another possibility is that maybe the Woodchuck was whistling  or barking . I think I was quite a way away, and the barking in particular sounds a little like a soft grunt; I'm not sure I would have heard it distinctly enough to have known it was coming from the Woodchuck. Is it possible that Woodchucks get gobsmacked ? June 15, 2022 at Sourland Mountain Preserve Photo 210217929, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

I've discussed before the various insects that are attracted to milkweed , and this Great Spangled Fritillary and Red Milkweed Beetle represent the 2 main motivations of those insects. The Red Milkweed Beetle represents the insects that want to eat (some parts of) the milkweed, while the Great Spangled Fritillary represents the pollinators that are just here for the nectar. While I'd like to think these guys are friendly acquaintances who meet at the milkweed the way coworkers meet at the water cooler, the realist in me suspects that (at best) they only recognize each other as non-predators they can be around without fear of being eaten. June 15, 2022 at Sourland Mountain Preserve Photo 210218218, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

It looks like I caught this Great Spangled Fritillary in flight, something I rarely attempt because of the difficulties of properly focusing on a moving target. I was probably either: Relying on the camera's autofocus to get a picture of a distant butterfly, Or maybe I had focused on a butterfly and snapped a picture just after it started flying off that spot. Though this particular individual looks especially bright (perhaps aided by just the right sunlight), Great Spangled Fritillaries are large and orange enough to be both conspicuous and a fairly easy identification. Though orange is a fairly popular color in the butterfly community, their particular pattern makes them difficult to confuse with anything other than a couple rarer and smaller fritillary cousins like this Variegated Fritillary . On this June trip to Sourland Mountain Preserve, the Great Spangled Fritillaries were out in force; I probably saw 15-20 of them that day. Except for bees, they were probably the primary