For Birds in Your Yard, Shelter Equals Safety

Some of the birds in my front yard a few years ago, including a leucistic finch. I grew lots of beans that year, as you can see in the background.

If you feed the birds, do you have your feeders in your front yard, your back yard, or both? What kind of shelter is available nearby? Do you grow plants specifically for the birds, or leave plants standing in the fall so birds can still use them? If you want to improve what you offer for wild birds in your yard, a good place to start is looking at what kind of shelter they can find.

In general, you want your yard to feel safe in order for wildlife to come inhabit it. So the more branches you have for birds to perch on, or tangled vegetation for them to hide in, the safer birds are likely to feel in your yard. In theory, that should lead not only to more birds at your feeders, but hopefully also a wider variety of birds showing up in your yard.

Indigo Buntings live in open woodlands, so if you live close to a forest, adding shrubs and bushes to your yard might get one of these beauties to come visit you.

I currently have my bird feeders in our front yard instead of our back yard. I do this because my home office faces the front yard, so that’s where I usually do my feeder watching in the mornings. The front yard also gets more sunlight than the back, so I can grow lots of native plants near my birdfeeders. The plants provide extra food, like I wrote about in this post, and also provide cover and shelter for the birds.

Female Purple Finch really blends in among the Ironweed seedheads. She seemed pretty content munching on those seeds too.

While having the feeders in the front is convenient to watch, it also gives me somewhat of a disadvantage. Pedestrian and car traffic often goes by on the road there, so the birds may be startled away from eating. Also, the very thing that helps me garden in the front, that no trees loom overhead to shade out the sun, might also make little birds feel in danger from a hawk’s overhead attack.

Red-tailed Hawks are common in my area, and would definitely be a threat to my feeder birds.

In the winter we also see Cooper's Hawks like this one. It wasn't very clever at hunting, though-- it sat right out in the open, probably wondering why no more birds were coming to the suet feeder.

So recently I’ve wondered if I might see more or different birds, if I had my feeders in the back yard instead. A large maple tree shelters most of the yard there, joined by a couple small cherry trees, a white mulberry, and other shrubs, plus the large oak tree growing next door. All this provides a wide variety of cover for birds. There’s also the log pile shelter over in the corner that I built a year or two ago and described in this post. Basically, the back yard habitat is older and wilder than the front yard. My gardening efforts in the front are much newer, it's only been a few years since I turned a grassy lawn into garden beds.

This winter I’m going to run a little experiment, by putting additional feeders in the back, and see what shows up there compared to the front. My first back yard feeder has been up for a few days, and I don’t think the birds have tried it yet. The squirrels, of course, discovered it at once. I better make some more squirrel baffles for the back yard! I’ll keep track of my front and back yard birds this winter, and post an update in a few months.

At least the new bird feeder is all metal, so I don't have to worry about chewing damage. Darn squirrels!

As you think about garden plans for next spring, consider adding a couple bushes or shrubs to help wild birds feel safer there. My next-door neighbor’s evergreen holly hedge is always full of talkative little House Sparrows. You can even consider plants that will give your yard “winter interest”—that is, plants with interesting seedpods, bright berries, or colorful bark, so when the leaves all fall you still have something to look at.  Those seedpods and berries can also provide more food for the birds, of course! A few shrubs you and the birds might enjoy are redtwig dogwood, whose bare red bark looks pretty against the snow, and native Winterberry holly, whose scarlet berries are very attractive once the leaves fall. Dried native grasses and their seedpods can be very pretty too.

If you add some extra shelter for your birds, let me know how it goes!

Carolina Wren

Your Messy Garden Can Feed Hungry Winter Birds

A few weeks ago, I posted about how some uncommon Purple Finches arrived at my birdfeeders, part of an irruption (sporadic migration) from Canada this year. They're here because the spruces & other conifers up north didn’t produce as many seeds as usual. The birds came south looking for more food, and a few found it in my yard. While the Purple Finches were happy to join my usual Cardinals, House Sparrows, and White-breasted Nuthatches in eating sunflower seeds, some birds won’t come to a feeder. If you provide the right kind of natural food and habitat in your yard or garden, though, you may be lucky enough to host more than just “feeder” birds in your yard.

One of the Purple Finches, who seem to have moved on. Perhaps more will show up soon!

For example, some birds are normally insect-eaters. Some of those head south for the winter, but others who breed up in New England are arriving in my area right now. They’re helpful picking off any aphids or beetles still lurking in my garden. I recently watched a Ruby-crowned Kinglet flutter around my yard, presumably plucking insects off the undersides of leaves. I’ve also watched wrens busily exploring under my garden bench and in the eaves of my porch, plucking spiders out of the dark corners. By allowing insects and spiders to live in your yard, you also help feed many birds!

We only see Ruby-crowned Kinglets in the winter around here, so it's always exciting when I spot the first one for the season.

"Hmm, any tasty bugs up there?"

Later, as winter drags on, insects are harder to find. So a lot of these birds will be looking for additional food, such as berries or other small fruit. Shrubs like Serviceberry or Spicebush, and trees like Crabapple or Dogwood provide the food that will help these birds survive the cold. Any of these plants would make great additions to your wildlife garden. I usually recommend native plants, but even some ornamental and non-native plants can provide food. The Bradford Pear in my neighbor’s yard has recently been filled with Robins, Blue Jays, and Starlings devouring its small, hard fruits.
In previous years I've sometimes seen Cedar Waxwings in that tree too, although they haven't shown up yet this year.

Shrubs also collect leaves and other detritus like twigs and bark chips beneath them. That’s where lots of garden invertebrates live, such as snails, sowbugs, spiders and insects. Since birds also like to perch in the branches at night, by planting shrubs you’re essentially providing a birdy bed and breakfast!

Because I let most of my plants die back naturally and don’t do much deadheading (removing old flowers before they become seeds) or other fall “cleanup”, I have lots of different seeds for my winter visitors, in addition to the sunflower seed in my feeders. Some birds that are seed eaters don’t come to feeders, so I can still attract and feed them by taking a hands-off approach in the garden. (Less work for me, too-- bonus!) Currently I have seedheads from Ironweed, Joe-Pye Weed, Boneset, Echinacea, Rudbeckia, and Agastache in my garden. This also means that on days I forget to refill my feeders, there is still food available for the birds.

A Purple Finch female nibbled on some of the Ironweed seeds in between feeder visits.

Finally, birds need water just as much as we do. When the temperature is below freezing, many of the local birds’ usual sources may be frozen over or hard to reach. Providing water can attract many birds that shy away from traditional feeders. If you have a bird bath already, you’ll need to have a way to keep it from freezing over too. I’ve experimented with DIY methods over the years, reluctant to buy a gadget if it wasn’t really necessary. I tried just pouring boiling water onto the ice in my birdbath every morning, for example. The birdbath refroze pretty quickly, though, so that didn’t seem like a very good alternative. In fact, I never saw birds take advantage of the warm water for the short time it was thawed each morning. There probably wasn’t enough time for them to notice the water. So I ended up using an aquarium heater to keep my birdbath thawed. That heater died last winter, though, so I’ll have to get a new one soon.

If you want to provide habitat to help migrating songbirds this fall and winter, it’s really as easy as leaving seeds and fallen leaves in your garden and yard. Remember, messier is better for birds in your garden in the wintertime! I’ve posted before about my messy garden too.

I hope you see interesting birds in your yard and garden this winter! I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

Happy Owloween!

For Halloween this year I wanted to let my birder and naturalist colors fly. So instead of the usual face on my pumpkin, I decided to carve something appropriately spooky but more from the natural world.

I started a Pinterest board to collect patterns and ideas. Let me tell you, there are some seriously talented pumpkin carvers out there! I found a lot of very intricate patterns-- gorgeous, but I knew I needed to be less ambitions. So I kept looking for something simpler.

I admired lots of bat silhouettes, cats, and spiders before finally spotting a lovely silhouette of an owl with full moon. It looked like getting the exact angle of the shoulders might be tricky, but was still a simple enough shape that I might have a chance at success. I found it in a DIY Network article pin-- the art itself is copyright Paper & Pigtails for DIY Network. I saved the image and resized it to fit my already-purchased pumpkin.

Once I had the size right, I created a stencil by razoring out the negative space. Next I taped the stencil onto my hollowed-out pumpkin and traced the design on with a marker.

I ended up using two knives to carve this pumpkin. One large one for cutting the top off the pumpkin and for taking out big chunks in the design, then a smaller one for finer details and better shaping, like to get my moon actually round, and to refine my owl's eartufts.

I ended up omitting a few details that were too intricate for my knife skills. But I think I came pretty close, and my owl is definitely still recognizable!

My freshly carved pumpkin

The next day, the owl had started to tip over outside of the pumpkin, so we fastened it to the side with a toothpick.  This is something I would note for future carvers-- the tenuousness of the carved owl's connection to the rest of the pumpkin. You may want to strengthen or reinforce the owl right away, rather than wait for it to fall over first.

I liked the design so much I took the stencil and also used it as a Halloween window decoration. We put it behind purple tissue paper and shone a flashlight on it to create this look:

The purple glow is very spooky, don't you think?

I do have one thing to admit, however. Although I love eating crunchy roasted pumpkin seeds, the last few years I've saved my pumpkins' seeds with the intention of roasting them. But then weeks later I still haven't done it,  and the seeds have grown mold in my fridge. Blech! So this year I decided to skip the moldy fridge step and dump all the seeds and pulp into my compost bin. Who knows, maybe next summer one of the seeds will sprout and I'll have volunteer pumpkins by next Halloween!

Cool facts about Great Horned Owls, the species I think is depicted here:

• They eat skunks! This owl's poor sense of smell actually benefits it when time comes to make dinner from a pungent skunk. It's even been reported that some of these owls leave the smell of a skunk behind on remnants of other prey. 
• They nest very early in the season. If you live in Great Horned Owl territory and appropriate habitat, you could try putting up a nesting box for these large owls in your back yard. The Nestwatch project from Cornell Lab of Ornithology offers plans for building and posting one if you're interested. 
• Often, though, a Great Horned Owl pair just takes over an old nest built by another species, as did the pair that I saw in Boyd Hill Nature Preserve, St. Petersburg, Florida last year. (I included the nest in my year-end eBird wrapup post.)

Stay tuned for my attempts to turn the pumpkin into a set of bird and squirrel feeders.

Fabulous Purple Finches

One of the Purple Finches that arrived in my yard recently

Most winters, I spend hours peering at the birds at my feeders, in futile hopes of spotting a Purple Finch amid the throngs of House Finches. The two species look fairly similar, but while I have House Finches all year, the Purple Finches only come to my area in the wintertime. I suppose most people wouldn’t care which is which, or which one happened to show up from year to year. But I’m not quite like most people—I’m a birder.

Birding at the C & O Canal this summer

For me the thrill of seeing a new species for the year, for the season, or even the first time in my life can last for days. I use eBird to track the number of different species I see each year, as well as my lifelong sightings.

The reason I longed for a Purple Finch in my yard is their infrequent visits to my area. They’re not rare overall, but they don’t make it to the DC area every year, to say nothing of my own neighborhood & yard. I have house finches in my yard all year, including numerous youngsters begging food from their parents in the late summer. Purple Finches, however, spend the warmer months much farther north—in Canada and northeastern U.S. They only venture as far south as DC in the wintertime, if at all.

A White-throated Sparrow from last winter

Other birds also come to my area only in the winter, like Dark-eyed Juncos and White-throated Sparrows. But while these birds are regular and reliable winter residents, the Purple Finches don’t always show up here. Their winter movements depend in large part on the size of the cone crop in their Canadian breeding grounds. How good a year conifers like pines, firs, and spruces had affects the amount of food available if the birds stayed north for the winter. In poor years for conifer seeds, we mid-Atlantic birders have a much better chance of seeing uncommon winter visitors like the Purple Finch and Pine Siskin. Ornithologist Ron Pittaway makes an annual winter finch forecast to help birders know whether they can expect movements of these longed for species. The summer of 2018 was a poor cone crop, according to Pittaway’s report, and indeed Purple Finches have been seen all over the midAtlantic region, including my yard. For once, examining every finch at my feeders paid off!

The Purple Finches were pretty hungry when they arrived.

In fact, the Purple Finches arrived in my yard even before I saw many of my winter regulars like White-throated Sparrows and Dark-eyed Juncos. The first thing I noticed about them was the bright white line over the females’ eyes, called a supercilium. Females are brown and streaky, much like the female House Finch. Males of both species are washed with pinkish-purple. They also have a more intense supercilium as well as a darker stripe down the sides of their chin (called a malar stripe). On the Purple Finch, these stripes are pink, while the House Finch's marks are brown. I had to double-check in both Peterson and Sibley field guides to make sure, but yes indeed, I finally had my Purple Finch! The Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Project Feederwatch has a very helpful description of Purple Finch and House Finch field marks as well.

Female House Finch on the left, female Purple finch on the right.

That was my 137th bird species for this year-- tantalizingly close to my goal of 150! Will more uncommon birds visit my yard this winter? I sure hope so. Have you seen any interesting birds this fall? I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

Hurricane Florence Versus the Butterflies

With Hurricane Florence smashing into the East Coast of the US this week, just as Monarch butterflies are starting to migrate, I wondered how the insects would be affected by such a huge storm.  Would they be able to survive, or would this be a major setback for the struggling species?



Male monarch nectaring on a New York Aster

It's a little hard to tell right now of course, the storm only just arrived in the Carolinas today. But I found some anecdotal stories about how Monarch butterflies survived previous hurricanes that made me feel a little less anxious.


According to this post from Journey North, butterflies and caterpillars are likely to take shelter before a bad storm hits. Perhaps they can sense the sudden drop in pressure or something else that precedes the storm, and know to get out of the way. Another post on Journey North quotes Florida monarch-watcher Harlen Aschen, who says he's seen butterflies withstand even 50 mph winds, clinging to plant stems.


In 2015, Hurricane Patricia also smacked into Arizona just as the western population of monarchs was due to migrate through there. According to this news article from azcentral.com,  in a fortunate turn of events, the monarchs actually moved their path eastward, out of the way of the hurricane! Wow. That's pretty significant. Did they know to do that? Or were they just luckily and coincidentally blown off track? We don't really know.

So the biggest risk to butterflies from a major storm isn't likely to be of hurting the butterflies themselves, but instead destroying the habitat they depend on. If a lot of areas get flooded, nectar sources the butterflies need to fuel their migration could be hard to find.

So what can we do to help butterflies make it through hurricanes?  I found a few suggestions. Birds and Blooms magazine recommends we gardeners add lots of places in our yards for butterflies to find shelter. Strong tall plants for them to cling to, lots of loose earth and rotting leaves for caterpillars to hide in, and loose stone walls or log piles with lots of crevices into which butterflies can crawl. After the storm passes, if there was a lot of flooding in your area, the remaining nectar sources will probably be minimal, but butterflies will still be as hungry as ever. Since fall is a great time to plant anyway, why not add some additional late-blooming nectar sources to your yard, like goldenrod and asters? The more blossoms you can add to your yard after the hurricane, the better for any passing butterflies.


So get through this storm. Then once it passes, you can look for ways to help your local butterflies recover or to help protect them from the next storm. 
Be safe out there!

Monarch Caterpillars at Last!

This summer has been a very sparse one for caterpillars in my yard so far. I’ve found not a single Black Swallowtail egg or caterpillar, nor seen any adult butterflies. As I mentioned in this post about my Promethea Moth, I had only one overwintering Black Swallowtail chrysalis this spring, which eclosed shortly after its cage had blown away during a storm. By the time I found the cage again, the trapped butterfly (and its companion Spicebush Swallowtail) had died for lack of food. Poor things.

I hoped that the wild population did better than my captives, but I haven’t seen any signs of that yet. I’m letting dill volunteers sprout all over my garden, though, just in case there are a few wild Black Swallowtails nearby.

That being said, though, my caterpillar hobby didn’t go bust this summer after all. Over the last few weeks, my yard’s milkweed patch was finally discovered by Monarch butterflies! I have both swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) and common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca). My husband spotted a Monarch paying special attention to the swamp milkweed while I was at work one day. When I checked those plants, I found my first monarch egg… and two plump caterpillars! Clearly there had been monarchs visiting my yard before that day too.

One of the first big happy caterpillars

The egg hatched just a few days later. I actually didn’t find the caterpillar the day it hatched—I forgot to check the cage that night. The next day, though, I discovered the tiny hatchling had wandered off its milkweed leaf onto the side of the cage. I quickly coaxed it onto a scrap of a milkweed leaf, and pinned that onto a fresh sprig of milkweed.

So tiny: how much smaller the hatchling is compared to the pin shaft!

Although I nearly had a heart attack when I realized the hatchling had gone without food for an unknown time, not staying on the milkweed probably saved it from being eaten by its ravenous companions. The two older caterpillars were now eating everything in sight, so I decided to keep two separate cages: one for eggs and hatchlings, and one for third-instar and older caterpillars.

Eggs and babies on the right, late-instar caterpillars on the left.

Over the next several days, I kept finding more eggs and caterpillars each time I went out to the milkweed patch. At first they were all on swamp milkweed, but eventually I found eggs on common milkweed as well. It seemed like every time I looked outside there was another monarch ovipositing! Eventually I gave up on collecting all of the eggs, as I was running out of room. I figure I’ll let the eggs hatch in the wild and then bring in caterpillars as I find them, so by then. As of this writing I have 21 caterpillars from tiny hatchlings to fat fourth-instars,  four more hanging in J, and four chrysalids. Whew!

A wild "j" that I found at Brookside Gardens a few years ago

The first two Monarch chrysalids

This sudden population explosion is actually pretty typical in my area. The monarch numbers have been silently building through the summer, culminating in the fourth and final generation, the migrators. (I think these caterpillars are the last generation, anyway.)

So far, it seems that Monarch caterpillars develop much faster than Black Swallowtails, especially transitioning from last instar to pupa. The two first caterpillars went from spinning their silk button to hanging in “j” (equivalent to how Black Swallowtails hang in their safety belts) to a glistening green chrysalis in about 24 hours! I didn’t get a photo of either caterpillar in j because of that, the speed really caught me by surprise. Black Swallowtails, on the other hand, usually spent a day or two in prepupa after spinning their safety belt, before finally molting into chrysalis. I don’t know how long the Monarchs spend in chrysalis yet, but as soon as the first two eclose I’ll be able to update this post.

The Eyes (and Legs) Have It

One of my favorite things about having a wild-ish yard & garden is seeing amazing tiny critters there. While I love birds, there are only so many species that are likely to stop by my feeders. I never seem to run out of new insect sightings, however, right on my own property! I think maybe I should have considered entomology as a career path, I find the insects (and similar invertebrates like spiders) so fascinating.

So today I want to show you a few of my favorite recent sightings. I'm not even including any butterflies in this post; these are just some other cool bugs and spiders up close. Judging by the photos I've been taking lately, I am particularly fascinated by eyes and legs. Who knew?

My first observation this week comes with hundreds of legs, although it's not just a single individual.  It turns out that some species of wolf spider carry their offspring around on their backs for weeks until the babies are big enough to catch their own food. I encounter a lot of wolf spiders in my yard and garden, but don't often get to see them with spiderlings still attached. I found this little family while weeding my gravel driveway. That's a lot of little ones!

I managed to get a couple of photos while she was still out in the open...

...before she scurried under a chunk of mulch. Look at all those legs!

Where spiders have eight eyes, I think insect eyes are often even cooler. The giant multifaceted eyes of dragonflies, for example. But this little syrphid fly that I found sitting on the center of an echinacea flower,  is definitely in contention for best insect eyes ever! I *think* it's a Wavy Patterneye (Orthonevra nitida); I'm still waiting for confirmation/correction from other folks on iNaturalist. 

The fly almost looks like someone drew squiggles on its eyes-- Wavy Patterneye indeed.

And finally, I've finally confirmed that my yard is hosting leafcutter bees. I've been seeing a lot of clean little bits taken out of leaves on several kinds of plants, with no caterpillars in sight. I haven't found any leafcutter bee nests in my bee hotel yet, but then I spotted this cute little bee on some Woodland Sunflower (Helianthus strumosus). It looks a lot like a bee another naturalist I know recently tweeted as a Western Leafcutter. So I'm thinking it's at least the same genus-- Megachile-- which includes Leafcutter, Mortar, and Resin Bees. Leafcutter bees line a tubular nest with bits of leaves and then lay eggs in separate cells, provisioning each cell with pollen or maybe a mix of nectar and pollen. The little larvae eat the food when they hatch, then cocoon and later emerge as adults. Pretty neat! 

Gathering nectar or pollen, for a nest perhaps?

As for where the leafcutters are nesting, we do have a lot of Carpenter Bees around that make their nests in our wooden fencing and porch eaves. Maybe the Leafcutters are using old carpenter bee burrows? I'll keep looking for the leafy cocoons... meanwhile I think this striped little bee is pretty darn cute! Click the above picture to enlarge it so you can see its big gorgeous eyes. 

That round stripey bottom!

Here are the signs of leafcutter bees that I've been seeing-- neat, semicircular bits cut out of the edges of leaves. Have you seen similar signs on leaves in your area? Pretty cool what you can discover if you just keep your eyes open! (See what I did there?)

Interesting how there were different size chunks taken out of these leaves-- sometimes small, sometimes large.

Many, Many Mergansers!

By now, you've probably seen Brent Cizek's viral photo of a hen Common Merganser leading a long train of about 50 fuzzy little babies. (If not, check it out at his photography website, plus his followup visit a couple weeks later, when the group had grown to 76 ducklings. He found the incredible family in Minnesota's Lake Bemidji.

Why was the group so big? This isn't a case of an insanely large nest. Rather, most of the babies probably had different mothers. Common Mergansers often merge multiple hens' broods under the care of one hen-- although not usually quite so many babies at the same time! The new group of babies is called a creche.

It's even possible the hen in Cizek's photo might not actually be the mother of any of the ducklings, but rather their grandmother. Now that's one busy grandma! Baby mergansers can feed themselves as soon as they hatch, so at least she doesn't have to provide food for all her fluffy little followers.

Turns out Common Mergansers on the C & O Canal form creches too!

And remember the merganser family I wrote about back in May? Victor and I saw a large merganser creche reminiscent of Cizek's, when we took a sunset stroll at the C & O Canal a month after our first sighting. These mergansers looked to be about half-grown-- older than the fuzzballs Cizek photographed, but still clustering together as ducklings will. We counted at least forty individuals, which seems to be a large but not atypical group for Common Merganser creches. Presumably some of them were the seven little fluffballs we saw a month before.

I'm really glad to see further evidence of a healthy breeding population in our area. Although most field guides list the Common Merganser as only a winter resident in the MidAtlantic area, the Maryland Biodiversity Project states that they're increasing along the Potomac as a breeder. Cool!

Should we go this way?

No, wait, maybe over here.

Yep, this looks like a good direction.

Surprise Moth Survival

Happy National Moth Week, all. To celebrate, I thought I'd share my experience raising a Promethea Moth, and how it seemingly came back from the dead.

Last summer I tried my hand at raising some moth caterpillars in addition to my usual Black Swallowtail butterflies. I have several spicebushes (Lindera benzoin) in my yard, and there’s more in the park down the street. So when I found this cluster of stripey caterpillars on the underside of a spicebush leaf, I was very intrigued!

The young caterpillars feed together early in their development, when they're striped like this.

Later the caterpillars changed their appearance and behavior. Rather than stripes, they now had black and yellow knobs on them, and no longer clustered together. Apparently this is common for this species: my guidebook says that Promethea Moths are gregarious when young, then wander off solo as they get older.

They also eat a lot of spicebush in order to grow so big and fat!

Only one of the three caterpillars made it all the way to cocoon; I’m not sure why. In fact, I only had two butterfly chrysalids to overwinter as well, one Spicebush Swallowtail and one Black Swallowtail. To be honest, I can’t remember why, although since I did finish up my Masters degree last fall I might have been too busy to check the garden as often as I usually do! 

Anyway, fast forward to this spring. In April, when the nights here are generally above freezing (usually about 40) but the days are starting to warm up, I put any overwintering chrysalids outside (I described this HERE). I put all three of my pupae in a single cage and hung it on our front porch. I thought I had it well secured, but my set-up couldn’t withstand the insane winds that came with a week of storms in May. (Neither could our roof, but that’s another story.)

I didn’t realize the cage was gone right away, but toward the end of the week I suddenly noticed it was missing. It took us a few days of searching before we finally found it next door, in a deep puddle in our neighbor’s yard. The cage was nearly flattened as well. When I opened the cage to see if anything was salvageable, I found two soggy, lifeless butterflies. They must have eclosed shortly after the cage blew away, but of course were trapped inside with no way to get food. Poor things. The moth cocoon still seemed intact, even if it too was soaking wet. I put it in a clean, dry cage and set that in my office, hoping just maybe the pupa was still alive.

I kept checking the cage every few days, but there were no signs of life for almost two months. I had just about decided that the pupa must have drowned after all. But then while tidying my office, I accidentally bumped the cage. Suddenly a large, very agitated moth was flying around inside! I had given up too soon on my pupa, but luckily hadn’t gotten around to putting it outside for decomposers to pick over. For once, procrastination comes to the rescue!

Anyway, I shouted for Victor to grab the camera, and we went outside to free the moth. After a brief exploration of my leg, the moth decided to perch on an antique bike that hangs on our front porch. Although its camouflage wasn’t as effective here as it would have been on a tree branch, the moth stayed there peacefully for several hours through the heat of the day. It wasn’t until mid-afternoon that it took off, when I inadvertently disturbed it by whistling for one of our cats. (I wonder if whistling normally bothers moths? Interesting.)

"Hmm, not quite right for my first day out."

"Ahh... that's better."

Check out those fantastic antennae! Gorgeous.

I'm pretty sure my moth was a male. Males are dark brown, with markings along the edge of their wings, where females are reddish with markings on their entire wings, as shown & described here and here.

I last saw the moth flying up over my house, toward the canopy of an oak tree that grows in between our house & the next house. An oak tree is a much better place for a moth to spend the rest of the daylight, anyway. I hope it did well! Silkmoths like the Promethea don't live terribly long in adult form. In fact they don't even have mouthparts, since they don't eat anymore once metamorphosing! No wonder they are such little pigs as larvae. Should my moth find a mate, of course, the spicebushes are ready and waiting to feed plenty of caterpillars. I'll certainly update here if I get a second generation.

So even though I failed to overwinter butterflies this year, I succeeded with my very first moth attempt! Pretty cool. Hope you had a good National Moth Week too!

Are You My Mother? (merganser edition)

On a recent trip to Huntley Meadows, Victor & I got to see something that not only checked off one of my target species, but was somewhat puzzling. We were on the boardwalk lookout tower when I spotted a Canada Goose swimming along with a group of smaller birds trailing it. “Oh look, goslings!” I said, before I got a good look at the birds. In fact, it was a group of Hooded Mergansers following the goose as if they thought they were indeed goslings themselves. How funny!

Huntley Meadows is an unusual breeding spot for Hooded Mergansers, who normally breed much further north. They've been here for several years now, though, and seem pretty settled in.

I initially thought the appearance of family relations must have been only coincidental, something I imagined or added to the scene without a real basis in actuality. But when I was looking for more information on the algal bloom we also observed there (link here), I found photos of a Canada Goose apparently acting as nanny to a family of Hooded Mergansers both this year and last year, posted on the Huntley Meadows Community Facebook group.

My ornithologist friends suggested a few theories for what’s going on. Hooded mergansers are known for brood parasitism, where the mother bird lays her eggs in someone else’s nest, leaving that nest’s mom to raise her chicks. However, the difference in size between mergansers and Canada Geese makes this seem somewhat unlikely. When I looked closer at my photographs I also realized that the mother merganser was accompanying the juveniles and the Canada Goose, so she didn’t totally abandon her clutch. Another possibility is that the mergansers somehow imprinted on the Canada Goose. This is my favorite so far. I wonder even if the mama merganser herself imprinted on the Canada Goose, when she was young, and now has taught her own babies to do the same.

The mother is at the back of the group in this shot, slightly larger than the juveniles.

Either way, however, I still wonder what the Canada Goose thinks about it! What do you think might have led to this odd partnership? Feel free to suggest more theories in the comments.

Merganser Mama

Update: We went back to the C & O Canal a month later, and found a huge group of about 40 half-grown Common Mergansers, probably including the ducklings from this family. So of course, I wrote about them again.
  
Victor & I went hiking along the C & O Canal recently. My main intent had been to snag a bunch more new bird species for my year list, since spring migration is in full swing. I was indeed successful-- warblers and other songbirds were singing everywhere. I can't identify every one by call, but I was able to recognize several, and managed to confirm a few others I wasn't sure about by using the Merlin app from Cornell Lab of Ornithology. (This is a great field app, I highly recommend it! I have a post in the works about how I use it, so stay tuned.)

But in addition to the Indigo Buntings, Blackpoll Warblers, Yellow Warblers, Red-eyed Vireos, and Yellow-billed Cuckoos that I logged on eBird that morning, I finally was able to check off a longtime birding bucket list item: seeing a Merganser carrying her babies on her back! I knew mergansers do this sometimes, as do loons and grebes, but I'd never observed it in the wild. Now I have!

When we first entered the trail at Seneca Creek, Victor immediately pointed out a female Common Merganser paddling toward the Potomac. I trained my binoculars on her and discovered she was trailed by several little babies! In fact, one of those babies had already climbed on her back for a break. Victor & I took turns snapping lots and lots of photos as she hustled toward the larger body of water.  As she swam along, more and more of her babies clambered on her back. SO CUTE! Even though I also saw my first ever Magnolia Warbler that morning, the mergansers were still the highlight of the trip.


Not all of our photos came out-- it was pretty humid and misty out, and that gave the camera a bit of difficulty focusing, I think.  But here are a few of the better ones. Enjoy!

One baby is riding comfy on the middle of mama's back. Everybody else is hustling to keep up.

Now three babies have made it onboard.

Four babies are on her back at this point, with a couple still paddling madly along.

Finally, all seven babies are tucked up on top of Mama.  So off she goes into the Potomac. Farewell!

Butterflies by Group—Recognizing in the Field

There are some tips and tricks to identifying butterflies in the field, as I mentioned in my last post, "Butterflies for Beginners." Another good way to improve your butterflying skills is to learn the general characteristics of different types of butterfly. Once you've narrowed a new butterfly's ID to a basic group, finding the right species account in your field guide will be much quicker and easier. 

Spicebush Swallowtail

• Swallowtails
• Large, strong fliers
• Rounded “tails” off hindwings

Cabbage White

• Whites & Sulphurs
• Medium size
• Often fly erratically
• Usually perch with their wings closed, showing the pattern on their underwings
• Species in our area [MidAtlantic] usually have a few darker markings on a whitish/yellowish/orange background.

Juniper Hairstreak

• Hairstreaks
• Small
• Erratic flight
• Most species have thin hairlike “tails” off their hindwings, thought to be false antenna to trick predators
• Often rub their hindwings together while perched, making those tails wiggle like antenna
• Elfins
• Univoltine (single-brooded)
• Only flight is in early spring, roughly April
• Tailless
• Patterned in all browns
• Not quite as fast fliers as other hairstreaks

Eastern Tailed-Blue

• Blues & Azures
• Small
• Whitish/gray underwings, blue/gray/white upperwings
• Beware the Eastern Tailed-blue, which has tails like a hairstreak—even rubs its hindwings together just like hairstreaks do.

Great Spangled Fritillary

• Fritillaries
• Medium to large
• Patterned in oranges & browns
• Most of our fritillaries have obvious silver spots on their underwing, except for the Variegated Fritillary.

• Crescents—only one species in our area, Pearl Crescent
• Small
• Orange & black

• Checkerspots—only 2 species in our area, Silvery Checkerspot and Baltimore Checkerspot (rare)
• Medium
• Orange & black

• Anglewings
• I highlighted our two local species, Eastern Comma & Questionmark, in a “Tricky ID” blog post for my butterfly survey project.
• Distinctive shape
• Upperwing orange with black markings
• Underwing dead leaf mimic
• Silver mark on underside of hind wing- shape determines E. Comma or Q. Mark
• Fond of non-nectar food sources, but may also be seen at flowers

American Lady

• Distinctive Brushfoots
• Brushfoot—front pair of legs reduced in size and covered with hairs, often doesn’t touch perch
• Brushfooted butterflies also include Fritillaries, Crescents, Checkerspots, Anglewings. “Distinctive” don’t fit with the other categorizations though, so best to look at the silhouettes in your field guide and familiarize yourself with species photos.
• Mourning Cloak
• Red Admiral
• Painted Lady
• American Lady
• Common Buckeye
• Red-spotted Purple
• Viceroy
• Monarch

• Satyrs
• Medium size
• Brown, with eyespots
• Often have very bouncy flight
• Typically found in woodland clearings or near forest edges
• Likely eat from non-flower sources, some species will come to flowers though.

Silver-spotted Skipper

• Spread-wing Skippers
• Medium size
• Includes Silver-spotted Skipper, Duskywings, Cloudywings
• Don’t usually “jet plane” like smaller grass skippers, although they can

Sachem skipper in the "jet plane" posture

• Grass Skippers & Skipperlings
• Small
• Oranges & browns
• Note the “jet plane” posture they often assume: forewings held vertically, perpendicular to their horizontally spread hindwings
• Often the pattern seen on upper hindwing is diagnostic, so try to get looks at both the jet plane and closed postures if you can
• Several species are very similar! It’s a challenge to discern subtle differences.