northeast-flora-and-fauna

Here's a Blue Jay doing one of the things they do best: squawking.  Loud and bossy, these corvids (they're relatives of the crows) are commonly seen throughout the year here in New Jersey. Though they're known to prey on smaller birds, they actually eat mostly insects and acorns/nuts. And while I don't know if they fool any hawks, Blue Jays are known for their ability to mimic the cries of Red-shouldered and Red-tailed Hawks. (One possibility is that making these calls can really clear out a bird feeder, leaving the food for the Blue Jays.) April 30, 2021 at Duke Farms Photo 128320545, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

This Common Whitetail is one of the first dragonflies I've spotted this year. The wing pattern (dark at the ends of the wings and the middle of the wings) suggest this is a female. When I took this a month ago it was quite a bit harder to find dragonflies around here, but if you're looking for them now they should be a lot easier to find (at least here in NJ).  I saw a bunch at the Sourland Mountain Preserve this week, though there was a lot of flying and not much perching, making the photography options a bit limited. April 30, 2021 at Duke Farms Photo 128320340, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

This picture is a few weeks old, though with the rain we're getting today I suspect it looks approximately as verdant now, though the specific vegetation providing the green is probably different. I'm pretty sure that a lot of the low greenery back then was coming from Lesser Celandine, which is more or less dormant now.  I think we've been in a mini-drought here in New Jersey; at several places it looked like wetlands had low water levels. Things still looked green , but they didn't look green . I'm looking forward to seeing what the area will look like after this rainy weekend. This was taken over a small bridge going over Dukes Brook at Duke Farms. May 4, 2021 at Duke Farms

Here's someone for which I don't have an ID. I'm pretty sure it's one of the geometer moths , but I'm not sure the angle of the photo makes it possible to narrow it down to a species. Someone on iNaturalist suggested a Curve-toothed Geometer Moth , though the back wings don't give me a scalloped impression. I think a Large Maple Spanworm is another candidate, and thumbing through my field guide I could probably make a case for 2-3 more species. What I like about this photograph is that you could easily miss that there's a moth here at all; it really blends in well with the leaves left over from last autumn. I didn't spot it there; I saw it fly over there, and was able to spot it among the leaves once it landed. (Even knowing where it landed, I had some difficulty getting my camera on the right spot.) April 28, 2021 at the Plainsboro Preserve Photo 128319532, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

Here are a couple Mallards that I'm pretty sure are feeding while swimming along. Certainly it's not their standard way of swimming from place-to-place; they'd have their heads out of the water then, allowing themselves to breathe. But it's also not the classic head-down-butt-up pose of the average dabbling duck . But dabbling is considered a way to feed on stuff that's close to the surface of the water, and I'm thinking this is another way of feeding near the surface. April 27, 2021 at the Delaware Raritan Canal

Here's a Canada Goose that seems to be embracing its inner dabbling duck ; I'm not sure I could have identified it from this angle. Although I don't usually see them in this position, dabbling is apparently a feeding strategy they'll commonly employ to get at food that's a little further below the surface they can get to in an upright posture. Or perhaps the goose was just mooning me - it's hard to know exactly what it intended. 😀 May 6, 2021 at Sourland Mountain Preserve

Here's a Green Frog I met at the Plainsboro Preserve almost a month ago. (At least I think that's a dorsolateral ridge I see, and not just a result of a frog in a peculiar position.) I've talked about these frogs before, so I'll just say that this little fella seems to be in an awkward position between a couple of sticks. I generally see these frogs in a prime "jumping position", with their limbs unencumbered if they need to move quickly. This guy looks like he'd have to reposition a little bit before being able to jump into the water. On the other hand, the frog probably is positioned well have its head out of the water to potentially snag a tasty flying insect while still staying wet. This may be a case where the frog is in a good hunting position while at a slight disadvantage if it becomes the hunted. Just like all of us, animals sometimes need to compromise safety to be in a better position to succeed. April 28, 2021 at the Plainsboro Preserve Photo...