Tree Flowers

It's hard to come back to this blog after a long absence.  So much is happening, it always seems like, why should this flower, or this insect, be the thing that gets me back into it?  Plus, with so much happening... I could easily show 10 plants that have changed phenophase since I left for my family's reunion 5 days ago.  So what got me to write today?  I learned something!  Now, it's not like I know everything there is to know about the natural world.  No one does, and I suppose I know more than most, but a lot of people know more than me.  I often learn things about nature -- from books or the internet.  I see something, I go back and ID it, or I research it so that I can be sure I'm being accurate or have enough to say when I'm writing.  

Today I had one of those experiences when I just noticed something that I'd never noticed before, learned something just from seeing and experiencing it.  Sumac is a plant that doesn't get much mention at this time of year in my observations.  In the fall, it's leaves turn brilliantly red, orange and yellow quite early, making it a prime target for observations.  Its red berries are striking above its foliage.  But this is the flower:

Green, blends in with the leaves.  You'd walk right by it, and I certainly have.  What I noticed today was that the flowers were covered with bees.  (No, no photo with a bee in it.  Oh, well.)  I never really thought about what pollinated those green and rather uninteresting flowers before, but apparently honeybees don't find them to be uninteresting.  The flowers were literally a-buzz with bees!  Naomi's new knowledge for today, gleaned by my own research rather than someone else's observations!

I"ll switch from barely-noticeable flowering trees to some of the most showy:

These catalpa flowers, each close to 2 inches across, are really very striking and in full bloom right now.  Just look at that spectacular coloration -- the yellow and purple in there.  I wonder what that might look like to a bee or another pollinating insect with compound eyes.  (Like neon "Eat Here!!!" signs, I always imagine.)

More tomorrow?  Maybe!

State of the World

I've been failing in the end game for the last few days... I've been taking pictures and notes, but haven't managed to dedicate the computer time to getting blog entries actually published.  So here's the state of the world right now.  

The state of the world is lovely.  Warm and sunny and only lightly breezy.  This is the third day of perfect weather (and Friday was only a slight bit cooler) and I love it.  I can run and run and never think about the weather.  I can work in the garden -- and did I ever this weekend.  It's just... just... I can't even express.  Marvelous spring weather for the past few days. Here's just a bit of what I've been seeing...

• The first tick was found (not my me) on 4/14.  YEA!  Now we get to feel false (and real) creepy crawlies whenever we're out in the prairie or woods for the next 2 months!
• Pasqueflowers also reached their peak bloom on or around 4/14, when I took this photo. 

• Dandelions have been blooming for a little over a week now, but I didn't photograph one until Friday. 

• Crabapples leafed out -- this picture is from Friday, and by today they're even greener and leafier.  With them, the honeysuckles, the boxelder, and the lilacs (photo from today) leafing out, not to mention other shrubs like spirea, my blackcurrants... the understory has a definite green tinge to it. 

 

• The Norway maples are flowering -- their green-ish flowers fool people into thinking they've leafed out, but it's flowers first.  Red maples are also flowering (have been for a while, actually).  Sugar maples haven't started yet.  

• While we're on the subject of tree flowers, cherries have just started, and magnolias... they're in full and fragrant bloom, a full spectrum from whites and pinks to purples.  Really just a lovely treat. 

 

• Less pretty, but cottonwoods are catkining and actually the catkins are already falling like rain when you stand under the trees.  Soon they'll be sending off seeds like snow! 

• Celandine poppies started flowering this weekend...

• In the world of bulbs... daffodils are at or just past peak bloom.  Tulips are just starting, only a few varieties open.  Hyacinths are in full bloom, too. 

• In the insect world, I started seeing white butterflies all over this weekend.  Also ants, and those big fuzzy bumble bees.  And...
• I saw my first green darner!  It's dragonfly season!
• In the bird world, so much, and I'm not a good birder.  Wood ducks and yellow-rumped warblers.  Bob o'links.  Killdeer.  Buffleheads.  So much more...

OK, I think that'll be it for now... if that's not enough to process!

Happy Earth Week! (One day is not enough!)

First Flowers, Honey!

The Vernal Witch Hazels are flowering, their tiny but bright and celebratory petals celebrating our wonderful spring weather, and attracting the pollinators... As I knelt to take pictures of the blooms, I heard a buzzing and started to notice that the bushes were a-buzz with bees!  I caught this one in flight.  

TGIF

Oh, what a difference a day makes!  I described yesterday as cold, damp and windy -- those were the objective terms... I left out unpleasant, etc.  Today, however, was perfectly lovely.  Though I woke up to ice on the porch (tried to take a photo, too dark), it has warmed nicely and turned into a brisk fall day... it's sunny, lightly breezy, and altogether pleasant!  Here is a picture of the prairie with the woods in the background.  Though past prime in the color department, they were still looking remarkably pretty.  

Today's wildlife sightings were increased over yesterday, too... I did see a woolly bear yesterday, but that was it for the creepy crawlies.  Today, in addition to woolly bears, I saw dragonflies, grasshoppers, bees, and butterflies (a sulfur and a monarch, though there's not much left for them to eat.  The monarch landed on a dandelion in a lawn.)

I also noticed, walking along, a great many deer tracks on the trail.  I was just thinking in my head how there were really a lot today when this young buck charged across the ag field, saw me, stopped abruptly and stared at me for a minute, then took off leaping again, tail lifted in warning.  

Among the birds I saw, the red-tailed hawks were most notable.  They were soaring and circling, and calling out to each other like eagles in an old western (which, of course, used recordings of red-tails dubbed over footage of eagles).

Updates

After days of wind and chill, cloud and drizzle, today is a beautiful, sunny (and, I should add, windless) fall day.

Today is one of those days when, as you walk , swarms of grasshoppers jump out of the way, a constant wave of motion preceding you by a foot or two... 

Also still around: dragonflies (though green darners aren't so common anymore, mostly the red ones), butterflies (not monarchs, but sulphurs and whites), bees and wasps.

In the bird world, there are grebes on the lake (above, tiny) and goldfinches are officially brown, not gold.  This happened a few days ago but today I was watching a few eat seeds.  (No photo, though, they don't sit still!)

The prairie is looking autumnal, with lovely colors in the grasses.  The only flowers left in full bloom out there are the asters... New England a vibrant purple, and also the little weedy white ones. 

Bluestem shows its true colors... red.  (This is little bluestem.  Big bluestem is purpler, but neither is blue!

 In the tree world, sugar maples are turning... I'd estimate about 30% of them have gone orange.  The rest are still thinking about it.  Red maples look like this:

Creepy Crawlies of Devil's Lake

During five days spent at Devil's Lake and the surrounding areas, I encountered many fascinating arthropods. Happily for the reader, many of them moved way too quickly for me to capture with my camera, so you are spared the details of clubtails and saddlebags and bluets and many varieties of odonata. With lepidoptera, my camera and I did a little bit better. The swallowtails pictured above must have found some sort of desirable mineral deposits, because they clustered at the water's edge, and allowed me to get close enough to see the wing scales that give their order their name. Eventually, our proximity did alarm them, and a cloud of yellow butterflies fluttered in every direction around us, which nearly made me laugh out loud...

I also captured on film this pearl crescent and, from very far away, this luna moth.

Despite much trying, I was unable to get a picture of a black butterfly, 2-3 inches, with blue in its lower wings, possibly an admiral? We also found a fat-bodied, pink-winged cecropia moth, hanging out under the lights of the campsite bathroom (silly me, I didn't think to bring my camera to the toilet at night. Now I know.) (And of course, we saw a number of sulphurs and skippers and plain moths that didn't get their picture taken.)

By far the most common insect we saw were the larval form... caterpillars were everywhere. Smooshed on the trails because you couldn't avoid them, hitchhiking rides on our shirts because we accidentally walked into them as they hung from silken strands, and slowly munching their way through leaves galore. The tent caterpillars (eastern and forest, respectively) were the most common.

But we did see a lot of these, which I will call inchworms because that's what we called them as kids. I guess it's really a geometer. Whatever. That sounds like a tool for measuring shapes, or something. Inchworm sounds like a charming song, like childhood. Inchworm, inchworm, measuring the marigolds, seems to me you'd stop and see how beautiful they are...

This delicious-looking (think like a bird, dear readers... it's chubby and not at all hairy... yum...) specimen remains unidentified. It was removed from its host plant by a child who was carrying it in her pocket and proudly showing it off to hikers traveling in the other direction, which means my hopes of ID are pretty much shot.

One last larva -- a saw fly chewing up Solomon's seal.

Some other notable insects...

to the left is a fat fuzzy bumble bee snacking on a legume of some sort. To the right is a beetle, which I have absolutely no hope of identifying, but which I initially passed, thinking, "There's a bee on the trail," and then, "wait a minute, that's not a bee..."

This spider was HUGE. Chris described it as the size of a saucer. That may be a slight exaggeration. But only slight.

A centipede crawls around on the wet rocks.

And there ends the bug tour of Sauk County. I should have taken a picture of the deer tick that was on me. It was the smallest darn thing, very creepy.

Up next: Plants.

Life is Good

Bur Oaks Leaf Out

I wouldn't go so far as to say today was a perfect day.  After all, we cleaned the house and went to school.  But I will venture to say there were perfect moments.  Picture it...  Today was the first day of the year when it was warm enough for me to sit outside and read without a coat that I didn't have to be at work.  And so I donned a tank top... yeah, I know.  I would have better been alive before the discovery of skin cancer.  Or worse, because at least I wear sunscreen, knowing the danger.  I don't care so much about looking tan, I just really love the feel of sun.  Anyhow.  I stretched out on a lawn chair with a book about food, while next to me some of my future food -- seedlings that have been living too much of their lives under a grow light -- also basks in the sunlight.  

 

The seedlings really needed it, too.  I have been raising wimpy plants, unable to stand up to wind and wilty in the sun.  Normally I have them out more by now, but it's been chilly, it seems.But today is sunny with only a slight breeze and about 70.  So today they and I enjoyed the sun.  

Just about everything that's not fully green has a haze around it as new leaves finally emerge...  this doesn't seem like a warm early spring day when the sticks are all bare and the grass is still yellow.  And everyone mowed yesterday, so it's totally quiet of human noises.  Birds sing all around, some with songs I recognize... robins, a far-off red-winged blackbird.  Goldfinches dip by and LBBs are everywhere chipping and chirping and warbling.  Cutting through everything, the chickadee's two-note song, almost sad, alerts me to their presence in the yard.  This is the same call that I imitate to call students in from quiet field activities; perhaps he is calling me in?

I breathe in.  The air smells fresh and clean, mixed with sunscreen and the faint remains of last night's fire.  It smells like summer, although it is only the beginning of May.  And, although I have school tomorrow, I feel relaxed.  The house is clean, we are pretty caught up on the yard work, amazingly, for the moment.  Well, as caught up as you can ever be...

 

And then, the moment that already seems pretty darn good gets way better.  A huge green darner circles around the yard, flying close not once, but several times.  Odonates, dragonflies and their daintier sisters the damselflies, are my favorite animal when I have to identify one.  (Although really, my favorite animal is whichever one I see right now, a constantly changing menagerie as I contemplate the adaptations of the things that are surviving where I am.)  I love their jewel tones -- vibrant blues and emerald greens, oranges, reds, yellows.  I love their shimmery delicate wings and their bulging, multi-faceted eyes.  I love that they're tough, predators, survivors for 250 million years or so.  I love that they have a secret life, that the swooping, soaring insect that everyone recognizes, and which is the object of art around the world... that's just the last, flamboyant bit of a life spent mostly under water.  Depending on the species, they may swim as nymphs for 5 years before spending a short summer in the air.  I don't particularly love their violent mating rituals, but I am fascinated by them and respectful of them as the result of an evolution of behaviors that clearly works.  

 

I have always had these visitors to my yard, usually several species of dragon- and damselflies each summer.  I am grateful for their presence although we live several blocks from the nearest substantial body of water (I'm pretty sure the little pool where my sump pump releases water, though it is pretty deep right now and supports some marsh marigolds, isn't enough for dragonfly eggs).  

 

It's not just the dragonflies -- the insect world is definitely waking up.  Bumble bees fumble around the yard, and I've seen quite a few of the small native bees which I believe live in small holes.  I put up a home for them and I think they like it because I've had them around the last couple of summers.  Annoyingly, box elder bugs have been everywhere for the last few days and wasps are back at their old games of building nests on the side of my house.  I also saw a small white and a small yellow butterfly today -- those sulphurs and whites -- I probably couldn't ID them if I had a field guide and a pinned specimen.  But it's good to see them in my garden.

Yesterday I also saw a monarch!  Granted, this was a little bit to the south, but they're probably here, too.  I mean, it would be awfully lucky if I drove 30 miles to the south on the exact day of the first monarch there, and actually managed to see it, too!  But even if I did, they'll be here shortly.  

 

Other notables:  oaks leaf out, ash leafs out, (a lot of things leaf out...), first flowers on golden Alexander, first flowers on Jacob's ladder, Jack-in-the-pulpit has emerged and is about 4 inches tall, daffodils are kicking the bucket, potatoes have broken through soil in the garden, creeping Charlie is taking over the world. 

updates

The subtle orange flowers of the witch hazels are blooming.  (I had been looking out for them, but the tree I was watching doesn't have any -- the others do.  I think mine may be unhealthy.)

Also, bees.  (Actually, probably more like wasps, but kids call them all bees.)