Photo of the Week

This photo shows butterflies puddling on a pile of scat at Negri-Nepote Native Grassland Preserve. Puddling is a common behavior among butterflies. While butterflies can supply their energy needs by sipping nectar at flowers, they must look elsewhere for other nutrients like minerals. Sometimes they do this in actual puddles or muddy patches, but they will just as readily feed from scat. In this case, it provided me with a butterfly lifer, a Hackberry Emperor. The Hackberry Emperor is one of several butterfly species that begins its life cycle on the leaves of hackberry trees, particularly American Hackberry. Other hackberry specialists include American Snout, which I have seen during past vists to Negri-Nepote, and Tawny Emperor.

Photo of the Week: American Toad

This American Toad was near the top of the ridge in Schooley's Mountain Park on Saturday morning. After some initial skittishness, it let me approach fairly close and even moved towards me. This allowed for some close, wide-angled views of the toad in its habitat. During the breeding season, toads are found near wet areas. American Toads make a high-pitched trill while advertising for mates (a much different sound than the Fowler's Toad). Outside of the breeding season, toads retreat to drier areas like forests and meadows, where they forage for insects and worms.

Photo of the Week

This is a Common Mullein (Verbascum thapsus) growing along the banks of the Delaware and Raritan Canal in Franklin Township. Common Mullein is an introduced plant in North America and is frequently found in open areas, particularly ones that have been disturbed (like roadsides and weedy lots). It grows a single column of flowers surrounded by a rosette of hairy leaves. As the flowers finish blooming, they wither and the stalk turns deep brown. I have occasionally seen American Goldfinches picking at the dried columns to get at the seeds.

Photo of the Week

This week is National Moth Week. The vast majority of moths fly at night and have special adaptations for a nocturnal lifestyle. They navigate using the stars and moon, find each other with pheromones rather than visual displays, have cryptic patterns for hiding during the day, and can shiver to warm themselves on cooler nights. Some moths even have the ability to hear and jam bat sonar.

However, a select few moths fly during daylight hours. Such moths are often brightly colored and might be mistaken for butterflies, bees, or other insects that we are used to seeing during the day. Among these diurnal moths are the hummingbird sphinx moths in genus Hemaris, family Sphingidae, such as the Snowberry Clearwing pictured above. Like the Hummingbird Clearwing, also in genus Hemaris, its flight is reminiscent of a hummingbird's. Aided by its long proboscis, it feeds on deeply tubular flowers such as the wild bergamot in the photo above. The strongly contrasting yellow and black markings visually suggest those of a bumblebee. When I was photographing this Snowberry Clearwing, I had some trouble keeping track of which yellow-and-black insects were clearwings and which were bumblebees. Snowberry Clearwing moths use snowberry, honeysuckle, and dogbane as larval hosts.

I photographed this Snowberry Clearwing yesterday at Negri-Nepote Grassland Preserve during a Birds and Butterflies walk led by Chris and Paula Williams of NJ Audubon. As of my writing this, thunderstorms are predicted for every night this week, so I am not sure whether I will be able to put out my blacklight.

Photo of the Week

This is the flower of a Swamp Azalea, also known as Clammy Azalea (Rhododendron viscosum). Swamp Azalea is a wetland shrub in the eastern and southern United States. It is notable for its late blooming period. Unlike other azaleas, which bloom in May before they have fully leafed out, Swamp Azalea blooms in late June or July after its leaves are fully grown. The name "clammy" refers to the sticky hairs that line the outside of the tube formed by its petals. I took the photo above in the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge.

Photo of the Week

In late spring and early summer, it is common to see insect nymphs crawling around on plants. As hard as adult insects are to identify, nymphs pose an additional challenge since many of the distinctive markings and structures have not developed yet. The easiest way to tell if an insect is a nymph is to look for the wings. If the wings are missing or stubby and the adult form of that family or order usually has wings, then the insect is probably a nymph. (This does not always work, of course.) The insect above is a nymph Wheel Bug (Arilus cristatus), a type of assassin bug. In its adult form, a Wheel Bug has a gear-like hump above its thorax, which gives the species its common name. At this stage, that feature has not developed yet. One clue to its identity is the stout beak, which it uses to kill and eat other insects.

Photos of the Week

This weekend I participated in the Union County BioBlitz, which covered a cluster of three small suburban parks: Nomahegan, Lenape and Echo Lake Parks. The parks follow the course of the Rahway River and one of its tributaries. The habitats are mostly riparian woodland, with some open fields (both mown and unmown) and freshwater ponds. Saturday was my first time attending this event, but it has been held every year since 2005 and rotates among parks in Union County. A bioblitz is similar to a big day in its duration, but all taxa are eligible and the idea is to make as complete a census as possible of the living things at a particular site. Teams cooperate and share information, and there is usually an educational component.

The bird team came up with 70 species, which is very good for Central Jersey in June. Their sightings included a lingering Magnolia Warbler (which I missed). I came up with a little more than half that, but I was primarily working on insects. I am still sorting through my insect photos to identify and post them. So far I have 27 insect species on my list, with a lot more to identify. I know the total insect list from bioblitz will run into the hundreds.

My weekend included two lepidopteran lifers. One is the Banded Hairstreak shown above; the other is the Eight-spotted Forester shown below. Banded Hairstreak uses oaks, walnuts, and hickories as larval hosts and flies in late spring and summer. Eight-spotted Forester is hosted on vines, particularly grapes and Virginia creeper. While butterflies and moths feed on plants during their larval stages, as adults they drink nectar from flowers, and in the process pollinate many plants, which is necessary for the plants to reproduce. Both of these are fairly common species, so the fact that I had not seen either yet might seem surprising. However, insect lives are very short, and few of them migrate. Many butterflies and moths only fly for a few weeks, so if you are not in the right habitat at the right time, you will probably not see them.

If you would like to learn more about the moth diversity in your area, consider participating in National Moth Week, which is coming up very soon. This year the event runs from July 20-28.  Visit the link to learn more about how to participate.

Photo of the Week: Summer Azure

Birders recognize the transition from Yellow-rumped Warblers to Blackpoll Warblers as a sign that spring migration is reaching its final stages. The situation is more complex than that, as both species are present together for two or more weeks. But if you hear Blackpoll Warblers but not Yellow-rumped Warblers, you are probably in the last week or two of May.

In the same way, one can find seasonal harbingers elsewhere in the natural world. One of them is this species, Summer Azure, which shows up around the same time that Blackpoll Warblers are leaving. Summer Azure is part of a species complex that used to be known as "Spring Azure." Thanks to careful study of phenology, genetics, and microscopic traits, what once was one species is now several species, with a succession of overlapping flight seasons, starting in early spring and continuing through summer. Summer Azure is the last to appear and has two broods. In New Jersey the first emerges in late May or early June, and the second emerges later in the summer.

I photographed this Summer Azure in the Rutgers Ecological Preserve last week.

Photo of the Week: Periodical Cicada

When I lived in Washington, DC, I experienced the first emergence of periodical cicadas that I can remember: the massive emergence of Brood X periodical cicadas in 2004. This was shortly after I started birding. The noise they produced was so loud that at times I had trouble hearing birds. As the emergence ended, dead cicadas littered the streets and were picked up and carried away by the ubiquitous House Sparrows in DC.

This year I am in New Jersey for the emergence of Brood II. So far I have not seen or heard any around Highland Park, but over the weekend, I encountered a fairly large number of them at Fairview Farm Wildlife Preserve in Bedminster, New Jersey. There was a continuous chorus going in some parts of the preserve, though it was not as loud as some I experienced around Washington. The cicadas I examined closely all seemed to be Magicicada septendecim, with an orange spot in front of the wing and broad orange bands on their undersides. You can read more about identifying Magicicada species here.

Periodical cicadas have adopted an unusual life cycle in which adults emerge at 13-year or 17-year intervals to mate and lay eggs. This emergence lasts for only a few weeks, during which the number of adults in any given location may be massive. They spend the rest of their life cycle as nymphs deep underground, feeding on the roots of trees. When they are ready to emerge, the nymphs dig their way to the surface at night and then molt into their adult form. It is thought that the long, prime-numbered life cycle makes it difficult for any predator to specialize in preying on periodical cicadas, though of course birds, wasps, and other predators take advantage of the bounty when an emergence occurs.

If you see any cicadas from Brood II, you can report them at Magicicada.org.

See more of my periodical cicada photos on Flickr.