Elf Graffiti

While in Wildwood with my camera one very cold morning, I saw some strange tiny marks on a tree trunk. 

I snapped a few pictures and saw that they actually looked like black pen marks:

ELF GRAFFITI!

I snapped a close up shot:

I still couldn't read the strange writing so I looked even closer:

Those little elves are leaving secret messages all over the place!

Dr. Coté, remember he's the webmaster for the Wildwood website, has explained to me that I have really gotten images of Scribble Lichen (Graphis scripta) and that the marks are really lirellae or a form of ascomata which are fruiting bodies of the lichen. Now, I'm sure that's what those mischievous elves want him to believe. They don't want to get in trouble because because they are scribbling all over the tree trunks!
If only I could figure out what they have written....

Reach for the Sky!

My small camera does not have a long range zoom. It has a good macro lens for getting close-ups of flowers and critters, but birds and other far-away objects present a greater challenge and sometimes end up being blurs.

However, I occasionally look up and see something that I want to photograph. 

Last week, the rising full (almost) moon got my attention as I was walking to my car that was parked at the Park Road Entrance.

I decided to aim high toward the east:

Seeing that perhaps after several tries, I had an image that had turned out okay, I looked toward the western sky and saw that the sun had begun to paint large streaks and swirls across the heavens. 

I snapped:

I snapped again:

And again:

It was getting darker, and the sun was disappearing over the horizon with its colors.

Time for me to head home to a warm house and dinner.

Halloween in Wildwoood

While walking along a wooded trail on October 31, I decided to stop and search for mushrooms and other fungi. Earlier in September and October, I had gotten photos of bright orange ones that had reminded me of the spooky holiday that was soon to come.

Shaggy Scalecaps had been the most recent ones.

Orange Mycenas had been the most dramatic looking when I put my camera on the ground and shot up toward the sunlight glowing through them.

I had even gotten a good look at Orange Mycenas when they were very young and quite small - just babies!

I could soon see that I wasn't going to find any more orange fungi so I turned to move along the trail when I happened to notice some lichen growing on a tree trunk, in fact the pale green growth had covered much of the trunk. I usually don't pay very much attention to lichen - I don't know much about it, and I don't get very interesting photos of it. However, on Halloween Day, as I looked at the patches on the tree, I saw a few small lumps - and I didn't recall ever seeing lichen lumps. Suddenly, I saw that one of the lumps was quivering! I do know for sure that lichen does NOT move!!! Had I found haunted lichen?

There is the tiny lump that was moving - it was no bigger than a Skittle! I've marked it with a yellow arrow so that you can find it more easily.

I gently lifted the the blob and turned it upside down on my hand - it was a bug!
The underside of a bug!

Once on my hand, it quickly turned itself back over and curled up - much like
doodle bugs or roly-poly bugs  do.

It did stick its wiry little legs out a bit, but it would not uncurl again until I stuck it back on the tree - its home.

I later discovered by looking in Bug Guide that the little critter was a Green Lacewing larva. It covers itself with lichen dust so that its predators won't recognize it and will leave it alone. What a wonderful Halloween costume the little fellow was wearing - it surely fooled me!

Who Is This? What Is This? Where Is This?

I'm not writing about this photo that recently popped up in my camera!

I'm leaving it all to your imagination - answer the questions in the title 

or ask some more:

As I walked along a Wildwood trail a few days later, see who again popped up out of the leaves -
but with a slight change!

Now how do you explain this?
Wildwood Park is a magical place , but there has to be another reason for the green.

Blue Velvet

The recent rainy days sent me out to Wildwood to search for mushrooms. The damp weather is their favorite time to grow. I found a few, and as I crawled around to get the best shots, I saw a small fallen tree branch surrounded by colored tree leaves and fresh green garlic mustard leaves. It seemed to be covered with royal blue velvet! I certainly had never seen that anywhere before!

When I emailed the photo to my friend and fungi enthusiast, Gary Coté, he said that it is called Velvet Blue Spread or Cobalt Crust (Terana caerula or Pulcherricium caeruleum). The Latin name literally means "the most beautiful blue", which it truly is. It's a fungus that isn't often seen even by experts.

Wildwood is full of wonderful surprises!

Fall Color Changes

You might expect this article to have photos of trees with leaves that have changed colors.

Well you are in for a surprise!

While roaming the South Meadow with my camera recently, I saw a Buckeye butterfly gliding along the bike path and over into the grass. I had seen the familiar and beautiful "eye" spots on top of its wings as it flew. 

When it landed on a blade of grass,

the butterfly's weight caused the blade to bend and the under wings were revealed.

The forewings had eye spots and and the hind ones were a solid color but not the usual tan.

Instead they looked like a muted, rosy pink. I thought that the afternoon sunlight had caused them to be that color. I shared the photos with my friend and butterfly expert Clyde Kessler, and he told me that I had photos of a fall generation of Buckeye called the "rosa" form. When I did some research online, I found that the rosy color on the wings is caused when the eggs hatch and the butterfly grows up during fall days that are shorter and have less sunlight. Those days and nights are also colder. This combination causes the lovely rosy color.

Welcome to Wildwood, Rosy!

Wouldn't it be great if these colorful critters could stay with us throughout the year?

Winter gets too cold for buckeyes so they will migrate south to the Carolinas and on as far as Florida.

See you next spring, Bucky

!

(Be sure to read the article "2010: The Year of the Common Buckeye" written by Clyde on 10-15-10)

Zebras? In Wildwood?

No way, you say!

Zebras don't go galloping through our valleys and over our ridges. Ridiculous!
However, I do find some lovely creatures as I wander with my camera. Several times I have taken photos of a very small moth - a Snowy Urola (Urola nivallis).

Snowy is an appropriate name because it is as white as snow.

One day, as I walked down the slope into the floodplain under the North Bridge, I saw a white flutter and thought that it might be Snowy. However, it was a little bigger and kept crawling under the grass and would not let me get a good look, much less a photo. I followed it along until it flew over the bike path and across the creek beyond where I could chase. Oh, well, there was a beautiful butterfly at the butterfly bush in the meadow.

I knew that this was a Spicebush Swallowtail because I could see the two rows of orange spots as it nectared on the sweet flowers. It was missing one of its "tails" and might have had a narrow escape when a bird tried to have it for lunch!


Something else flew to the bush with tiny wings beating rapidly like humming bird wings. But it wasn't a bird it was a moth - a Snowberry Clearwing (Himaris diffinis). It is sometimes called a humming bird moth because it uses its wings to hover as it sips nectar from flowers.

I walked back up to the bike path and saw that the Cup Plants were beginning to bloom, their bright yellow disks shinning in the sun.

Cup Plants have an unusual attachment of their leaves to the plant's stem:

The stem perfoliates or pierces through the fused leaves and forms - you guessed it - a cup!

Cup plants grow six to eight feet tall and rain water gathers in the cups.

I was still curious about the white moth that flew away from my camera, so I returned a couple of days later to that same slope. Yes, I saw the white flutter again! But again it flew up toward the bike path. That's okay, I could stay busy with plenty of other plants and critters. As I looked around for my next shot, I saw the familiar white flutter, and it was down near the creek this time. The chase was on! I snapped!

Ah, ha! I saw a wing tip! Now it became a game of Hide and Seek!

I snapped again - what a tease!

Oh, I liked what I saw! I got down on my hands and knees and set my camera carefully on the ground.

One final snap just before the white flutter flew away across the bike path again and was gone.

That was okay because I had won the game! I had a wonderful photo of the Zebra of Wildwood, a moth named Zebra Conchylodes (Conchylodes ovulalis). This zebra flies over our  valleys and ridges instead of galloping...
but it sort of looks like a zebra, don't you think?

One Wonderful Hour in Wildwood

After missing a couple of days in Wildwood, I returned on Monday afternoon, entering at the Main Street entrance. I have learned that I need to get my camera out of its case before I get out of the car so that I don't miss a good photo op. As soon as I got around the gate, I was greeted by a fresh and lovely Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilo glaucus). It fluttered up to the top of a thistle plant that was higher than my head and tip-toed across the flower.

    

While I was shooting the butterfly, a humming bird almost bumped my nose with its beak - I don't know who was more surprised by that! Eastern Tigers have a wingspan of over four inches, and they are also Virginia's  official state insect.
I moved on around the wetland area and immediately saw a tiny flutter near my boot tops - Virginia's smallest butterfly, a Least Skipper ( Anclyoxypha numitor) was resting on a plant stem.

The tiny wings glow like bright orange sparkles in sunlight and this one even opened its wings to reveal the top side of those wings -  a sight that I had never seen before!

      And another later opened its wings even more. Ah, I saw some orange on the topside, also.

On a nearby leaf of bittersweet nightshade, my camera found an old friend - a Tater Bug (Leptinotarsa juncta) also known as a False Potato Beetle. Its handsome colors make it very photogenic.

Just above the Nighshade on a leaf of the taller Jewelweed , a Variable Dancer (Agria fummipennis) paused long enough for me to get a quick shot. It had a rich purple color in the filtered sunlight.

Moving on across the wetland, I soon spotted my newest favorite butterfly - a Giant Swallowtail (Papilo cresphotes). I really get excited when I see one of those - the wingspan can be as much as 5 1/2 inches. It's easy to see why it is one of the largest butterflies in North America. Until Monday, I hadn't gotten a very good look at those yellow underwings.

Earlier I had seen its rich chocolate brown upper wings and as it fluttered on the swamp milkweed flowers, I could get glimpses of each side all in one lively blur. I could even see the yellow "eye" on the tip of its tail and could hear the soft flap of its huge wings. 

 As I watched, another Giant joined the first, then another, and another - four in all! What an aerial show!
I eventually put my camera aside and just enjoyed the moment. A humming bird - perhaps the one that had almost collided with me - flew through the twirling butterflies, scattering them back to the flowers. I opened my camera again to capture the latest addition to the scene - a Spicebush Swallowtail (Papilo troilus).

 

Butterflies love Swamp Milkweed and so do tiny Swamp Milkweed Leaf Beetle larvae. While standing very close to a leaf, I saw one of those dear little creatures crawling slowly along a leaf and a stem. Slow crawlers help make good photos. Is that a shy smile that I see?

Just before storm clouds gathered enough to begin a sprinkle of rain and send me home to my husband Lou and the welcome dinner he usually has prepared for me, I reflected on the joyous hour I had spent with the Wildwood visitors and dwellers, and I knew that I could relive it in my mind with the help of my photographs. How privileged I felt...

GLEN ALTON OUTING

At this pond, you can often see many species of dragonfly. Today we saw few, but the snag trees were busy with birds, including hummers bossing everything around. Photo © Ray Callahan



A cloudy day, but an enjoyable, early morning trip to Glen Alton. Photo © Ray Callahan

Saturday morning (July 16th)at Glen Alton was cloudy and rather cool, relative to the hot weather of the last few days. It was cool enough that few insects were flying. Exceptions were bumblebees and they were everywhere even nectaring on plantain flowers.

Ray Callahan and I visited there to find dragonflies but found only two: a meadowhawk (Sympetrum) that was just emerging from the skin of its old nymph shell; and a female Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis). The Blue Dasher could barely fly because of the low temperature.

We did find a few species of damselfly:

Swamp Spreadwing (Lestes vigilax)
Aurora Damselfly (Chromagrion conditum)
Variable Dancer (Argia fumipennis)
Eastern Forktail (Ischnura verticalis)
Citrine Forktail (Ischnura hastata)

We saw only a few species of butterflies:

Eastern Tailed-Blue (Everes comyntas)
Northern Pearly-Eye (Enodia anthedon)
Common Wood-Nymph (Cercyonis pegala)

Birds were easy to locate, we found 45 species. Highlights included watching a pair of flickers feeding their babies. The young ones would stretch their heads slightly out of the nest cavity (in a large dead pine) and a parent would put food inside their mouths. Ruby-throated Hummingbirds were everywhere, saw twelve at least, probably a lot more. These were all crazy and feisty, diving at and chasing other birds from Scarlet Tanagers to Phoebes to warblers.

Glen Alton by the way is a great place for nature watching and discovery. It is located in Giles County. You can find five species of thrushes in nesting season: Eastern Bluebird, Veery, Hermit Thrush, Wood Thrush, & American Robin. Also Brown Creepers and Red-breasted Nuthatches are known to nest there. There are also scads of singing Blackburnian Warblers.

Many species of dragonfly and damselfly can be found there during the summer. Just not this morning.

Glen Alton is a great place for an easy stroll. There are several ponds for fishing. I plan on posting more about the place later this summer and fall. Stay tuned.



Appropriately enough several Barn Swallows would sally back and forth from this old barn. There were likely nests inside. Photo © Ray Callahan

Drama in Wildwood

WARNING: If you are squeamish or terribly tender-hearted  stop reading now!

On Tuesday, I took my camera to the Eighth Avenue entrance of Wildwood. Skipper butterflies love the Everlasting Peas (Lathryus latifolius) that grow there and often come to nectar. As soon as I arrived at the area, a Red-spotted Purple (Limenitis arthemis) greeted me and agreed to pose for photos for a few minutes in the gravels of the road, its colors glowing in the sunlight.

I ambled on to see what I could find in the peas and in the Spotted Knapweed (Centaurea maculosa) that had started flowering. 

Almost immediately I saw a male Sachem Skipper (Atalopedes campestris) resting on a leaf. 

He soon fluttered off to find a bloom, and I followed him with my camera. But wait - there was a green leaf blocking his tiny wing. As I reached carefully for the "leaf", I discovered that it was a leg - and it belonged to a young praying mantis!!!

Oh, no! That dear little butterfly had been captured by a predator.

Amazed, I continued snapping pictures.

 

Although I was heart-broken for the victim, I knew that the captor needed a good lunch. 

Such is the paradox of nature.