A few more butterflies

I've been trying to work on getting some recordings uploaded on the blog but I'm still having technical difficulties, so I'll stall for a day or so with a few shots from when I returned to Sarett some days ago.

The Baltimore checkerspots were actually pretty common, their orange eyes and legs gave them almost a creepy-crawly hornet sort of look, impressive, but I'm not sure I like them so much anymore.
Here I finally caught one in more traditional butterfly pose, they seemed to like to bask in the sun with their wings fully extended aimed exactly perpendicular to the sun as in the first pic.

For the umpteenth time a tailed blue had me thinking I'd found a hairstreak, but no.

Finally a vastly improved shot of a eyed brown. I did actually see a Mitchell's satyr at rest this time but it paused for about half a second only and kept on going.

Flutterbys and fens

I went with some of the family today to Sarett where there was a walk targeting Mitchell's Satyr, a small endangered butterfly whose current range is now mainly SW Michigan. We did see a few though none perched close by.

There were a few flowers in the area I'd never seen before, I think this is fringed loosestrife (don't let the name fool you, this one is apparently native (if correctly ID'd)).


Eyed browns are larger (and considerably more common) members of the satyr family, I digi-binned this one.

I was photographing a purple fringed orchid when a skipper flew down and started nectaring. I believe this is a mulberrywing based on the arrow/crossbow shaped mark on the hindwing, not a super-common species (for once) based on the light green rangemap in Sibley.

Finally is a distant digi-binned shot of a Baltimore Checkerspot, my 2nd most wanted butterfly (out of a list of 2, #1 is Milbert's tortoiseshell). I may even return to try to get a better shot of one (as well as one of the Mitchell's satyr).

A baby and my babies

I have no doubt that coming soon to this space will be crackerjack photos of a least tern in early morning light with the Tiscornia lighthouses in the background. However, until Tim finds one, we'll have to make do with things my 3-year-old finds.

Hazel was playing in her "fort," the cleared out space beneath a blue spruce in the front yard and apparently flushed out "a birdie!" which she ran to tell Mommy about. I set up the scope when I got home so she could see it better.
She'd found a juvenile mourning dove, probably not long out of the nest. I saw my first juvie mourning doves this year very early in May, so this bird must be part of the second crop.

She didn't really need the scope to get close, she could walk within feet of it before it would walk back under the spruce.

Randomness

I couldn't really come up with a cohesive theme for today's post. I got to the easy prairie blow-out before dawn, even earlier than last time. In the pre-dawn duskiness I heard 5 prairies and saw 2 fairly close without trying to, heard the summer tanager quietly picky-tuck-ing, and heard a black-and-white warbler singing a song I'd never heard, alternating the pitches of each wee-see phrase in a redstart-like fashion.

I then walked over to the Mt Randall trail but didn't hear the worm-eating.

I cut back out into the blowout with the early morning light but the warblers were now entirely silent. Towhees were still singing prominently though.

I found a flower I'd never seen before on the Mt Randall trail, Poke Milkweed:

Here's the remains of the turkey egg from the other day:

Juvenile chipping sparrows dawdled a little more than the adults did in the open.

Continuing the drossbird theme a catbird perched up to sing as well.

Finally I recorded a scarlet tanager singing in the pre-dawn. When I listened ot the recording it seemed to be singing more slowly than I think of them, I'll have to record one during the day as well. On the sonogram you can see how the the phrases have a wider range of pitches than the grosbeak's tighter phrases

Here's the chip-burr call note, the chip is the vertical mark and then the burr is the wider triangle that narrows its pitch range as it tails off.

One for Four

I arose before the dawn today trying to hit as many spots before the kids got up on my first real day off with "clear" skies in a while. The dickcissel colony on Elm Valley seemed to be thriving, it'd be worthwhile to walk the mile and a half along Elm Valley and Kruger and count how many singing birds there are. I probably heard at least 12 males just cruising slowly. No sign of the western meadowlark though. The dawn was just about to break as I left:

I arrived at the Warren Dunes "easy Prairie spot" to see a faint rainbow overhead, dark clouds over the lake, and what looked like downpours to the south.

I walked along listening for the summer tanager. I thought I heard a picky-tuck call very distantly and took a little side path in that direction. I never did find the tanager but did realize that one of the prairie warblers was teed up singing atop a cottonwood.

I eventually walked around him to get slightly better light and gain altitude (at the cost of distance), but for the first time ever vaguely captured some of the reddish back streaking in a pic...

He kept singing away. There were at least 3 singing males in this blowout (one that doesn't require a hike up the dunes, hence the "easy prairie" name for the spot)

My plan was to walk out over the dunes to the worm-eating spot since the road wasn't yet open, but I didn't really want to get a mile and a half from the car and have the storm hit so I ended up bailing on it, sure enough a downpour started about the time I got back to the car, getting me home before the kids even woke up!

washed away

I had hoped to get out early today to try and track down some of the uncommon breeders, but a pretty substantial storm system scrubbed the morning birding.

It didn't clear until mid-afternoon and didn't cool in the least, hot and very humid. I decided to try Warren Dunes for the summer tanager or worm-eating warbler. I walked out from the easy prairie spot and quickly heard a chattering call. It unfortunately was clearly not the summer tanager, instead this kingfisher gave me best photo-op for the species...

I walked the length of the Mt Edwards trail hearing a few hooded warblers, possibly a black-and-white, but nothing that could even be considered for a worm-eating. I was surprised to find this egg in the middle of the trail unbroken. I would assume that it's a turkey egg washed away from a nest somewhere up the hill onto the trail during the storm's onslaught overnight.

Finally a field sparrow sang prominently from the summer tanager blow-out. Prairie warbler, brown thrasher, bluebirds, and a sing-songing bird that was probably a funny oriole song were also heard.

Summer

Well, the sun has officially set on spring this year. It was as exciting as could be expected, though most of the quality rares were in the last half of May; I was starting to get worried in the first 2 weeks of May when I hadn't added any county lifers. Fish crow, Nelson's sharp-tail, and white-faced ibis, however, were all not just county birds but state birds as well (and the Fish crow should be a first state record).

I haven't gotten out that much as you can likely tell, my first few days off this month were spent camping up in Ludington where the photo highlight was this shot of the moon; it was mainly family time. (As was this last weekend when we celebrated Hazel's 3rd (!) birthday).

Today Ginger and I took the kids for a walk in one of the local parks where they most enjoyed the dirt in the path, but this little butterfly caught my eye. It was tiny, probably the smallest butterfly I've ever seen, and turns out to be the (appropriately named) Least Skipper. ID points apparently are the tiny size, fairly dark coloration, relatively smooth gradation between the light and the dark on the upperwing rather than the more typical sharp demarcations of most of the other local skippers, and the rounded lower wing.

Spiderwort is also pretty well in bloom, I adjusted the color on this image somewhat as my camera recorded them as much bluer than they are in reality.

Hopefully tomorrow morning I'll get out really early and see if I can't dash off western meadowlark, dickcissel, worm-eating warbler, and summer tanager for the year list. I'm actually several birds ahead of my 2007 pace when I had a personal-best 260 for the county and that's without having made the efforts after Birdathon this year to find some of the less common migrants, Connecticut warbler, olive-sided and yellow-bellied flycatcher, and Philadelphia vireo that a person definitely ought to have if they were being serious about their year list. Both kids will be in at least half-day school for an entire calendar year starting in 2011, I can feel the countdown for a real attempt (when I won't have to depend on Tim to find most of the good birds) at 270 beginning...