My bee balm plant is in full bloom.
On July 8 I saw a lovely butterfly on it. I followed it around as it went from flower to flower.
I think this is the first time I've ever seen one of these butterflies. Or are they butterflies? I looked them up and, at least at the present time, the skipper family is considered a type of butterfly.
Joining Lisa at This and That: A Blog for her #ShadowshotSunday.
Recently, I've seen this small butterfly on my sweet pea plants.
All summer I had not seen one Monarch butterfly. Not one.
Each year, there seem to be fewer and fewer of them.
But, on Sunday, I finally saw one. It wasn't close to me but I wasn't going to run after it. That's why it seems so small. There's only so much I can zoom in using my iPhone 13 mini.
Monarch on Milkweed.
Celebration, with a sigh of relief.
Joining Sandee at Comedy Plus for her #WordlessWednesday.
Saturday, spouse and I visited a combination gift/grocery store that has been open seasonally for many years in Maine, New York. In the spring, they have a temporary greenhouse with plastic sides they sell plants from.
Another nearby one was fluttering wildly against the plastic. I felt for it. I didn't want to hurt it so I put my finger near it, hoping it would see it as a safe haven. Then I would have walked with it outside.
It didn't get on my finger but it did settle on a beam and it let me take its picture.
I had to go. I hope they found their way out.
These are American Red Admiral butterflies, incidentally, and you can find out more about them here. Some years they are common, and I'm suspecting this will be one of those years.
Joining Sandee at Comedy Plus for #WordlessWednesday.
Oh where, oh where have all the butterflies gone?
August 6, the first monarch butterfly I was able to photograph this year.
August 3, bee on anise hyssop.
Joining Sandee at Comedy Plus for her #WordlessWednesday.
Nature has so much to offer us, if only we spend the time to watch. I'm guilty of not watching enough.
Today, we were getting in our car to go to a charity car wash. Spouse noticed this beautiful butterfly on one of our lilac bushes. Here in the Southern Tier of New York, the lilacs are opening up.
I think this is a male eastern tiger swallowtail. I followed it as it flew to another lilac flower.
One more view before it flew away.
In our local park, we were delighted to see this Virginia bluebell in bloom. There was only one small patch and it was a little bit off the trail, so this is a little blurry.
Another view.
Finally, I was able to capture a grey catbird (Dumetella carolinensis) singing on the Vestal Rail Trail the other day. I published one photo yesterday but remembered I had another one. Here our little feathered friend is. The other photo was better - you will barely see our friend in the center of today's photo.
These birds are full of personality and we immediately put out a cut orange out just in case one was returning to our yard. We had a pair last year and they tend, I understand, to return to the same territory year after year. (I know I wouldn't like them as much if I grew fruit, because they love fruit.)
What a beautiful spring day, and I need to get out and enjoy it.
Like many Americans, I was surprised, and saddened, by the death of Queen Elizabeth II. She became Queen the year I was born. She was the only British monarch I knew in my lifetime.
We knew, at age 96, that her days were limited but she met the new Prime Minister only two days before. What a shock it was to hear, Thursday afternoon, that she was gone.
But life goes on. The Queen is dead. Long live the King, his subjects say.
Unlike me, the Queen grew up in wartime England. For the first few years of her life, until she was 10, she wasn't even in the direct line of succession to the throne. She was thrust onto the world stage in her teens.
At 14, she gave a radio address to British children who were sent to other countries in the midst of war to keep their spirits up, on a show called "The Children's Hour".
At 18, then Princess Elizabeth served her country as a wartime mechanic.
At 25, she became Queen.
Queen Elizabeth II made mistakes, true, but also served her country with honor and composure. Her life was never truly her own. She may have been rich, but she was not free.
If she didn't like a particular duty, too bad. She had to carry on. And carry on she did, even as her health failed.
Until Thursday.
Now, her son Charles is King. King Charles III. I'll have to get used to the sound of that. So will he...the new King is 73 years old and is thought to be the oldest man to take the throne.
I took various pictures recently (except for the rose) which had to do with Kings or royalty.
LeRoy, New York. (Named after a New York City merchant Herman LeRoy, the name derives from the Norman people and means "The King".)
LeROI (equipment such as compressors).
Monarch butterfly (one of only a handful I've been able to identify this summer).
On Leroy Street, Binghamton, New York (taken in 2019).
I wish you well, King Charles III. You've waited so long for this moment. I hope you use the powers you do have as a constitutional monarch well.
I would like to express my condolences to my several Facebook friends who live in the United Kingdom and Canada for their loss. May King Charles III fit well into the footsteps of his mother.
In the third week of July, I was leaving my house. I passed by a container of pansies (which aren't looking that great right now - they do not like heat) and saw a black and red butterfly. It flew away but then came back and landed on a pansy. I grabbed my iPhone.
"Let's have a photo shoot", it seemed to say. "You've been complaining about how you can't seem to photograph butterflies, so I'm making you an offer."
It spread its wings out.
It stayed in the same place for a few seconds and shifted on the flower.
"Look at me! Make me famous!"
One last picture.
After our encounter, I looked the butterfly up. I'm somewhat new to watching and trying to ID butterflies. Turns out it's a common butterfly in our area, called a Red Admiral. Common, maybe, but so pretty. I'm grateful for its visit. And now, I'm publishing its photo shoot. Hopefully, fame and fortune will follow. For the butterfly, anyway. Apparently, at least, in England, they can live up to 10 months.
Here in the Southern Tier of New York, I don't know.
Joining Sandee at Comedy Plus for her #WordlessWednesday.
It's a scary thing. I have not seen (close enough to identify) any monarch butterflies so far this year. However, I finally saw (as in "I was able to make a good ID thanks to my pictures") a similar butterfly near my home in the Southern Tier of New York.
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| You can barely see it here in the upper left. Darn iPhone! |
Spouse and I were exercise walking on Monday in a local park and a butterfly that looked like a monarch crossed our path, on the way to some weeds. Would it stop long enough for me to get some pictures? It definitely wasn't a monarch; it was a little smaller than a monarch but definitely not a small butterfly.
I tried to get closer but it flitted away. I followed it. It alighted on a clover flower. I just couldn't get close enough. Here it is in the middle left.
But then it landed on grass.
And stayed put briefly.
I approached, snapping pictures. These pictures are still small but if I enlarge them too much, they will blur.
It's definitely a viceroy, a butterfly that mimics the coloration of monarchs. Naturalists used to think it mimicked so it won't get eaten, but that is now being disputed. Viceroys, like monarchs (it turns out) are toxic to many animals. The mimicry is actually more complicated than first believed.
You can ID from the bar lines just above the lowest black and white dotted area that run to the body. Monarchs don't have these bars. Also, viceroys are a little smaller than monarchs.
What a sadness that monarchs, incidentally, were just put on the endangered species list.
Joining Sandee at Comedy Plus for #WordlessWednesday.
The heatwave enveloping so much of the United States and Europe has finally found the Northeastern United States. So I am taking it easy today.
These pictures were taken on a Northern Pennsylvania rail trail on a beautiful early summer afternoon.
I think this small butterfly in the first two pictures is a Pearl Crescent but if it isn't, I know my butterfly experts will give me the correct identification. The second shot is practically identical to the first, but I did manage to get a little closer.
Now this, I'm more confident about. Eastern Tiger Swallowtail.
I don't have the patience to photograph butterflies. I've been seeing several monarchs (I think) in recent days but none of them have allowed me to take their portrait. One of them, in fact, was flying so fast, I marveled that such a little, delicate creature could fly that fast. But I know I'll get a picture or two - eventually.
Joining Sandee at Comedy Plus for her #WordlessWednesday.
Thanks to some delays (such as the park where our garden is located having to be closed for several days due to a paving project) we are a bit behind in our community garden plantings.
So right now we have small beginnings.
A bonus shot first, from a week or so ago - an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly near our raised bed.
Raised bed (my bed, which spouse has been tending this spring while my infected finger healed) from bottom to top, butternut squash, lettuce, tomato (left) edible podded peas (right) barely visible at top are zinnias. We lost some of our peas when we couldn't get in to water them. The butternuts are an experiment - these are supposed to be container suitable.
Raised bed other end, several garlic plants that we planted last fall.
A fellow gardener told us today someone saw a groundhog sunning himself/herself in one of these raised beds. We haven't fenced our box in (some people have) and we'll have to see.
We abandoned growing beans in the raised bed this year because we were feeding the deer, not us. Nothing seemed to help, even spray that is supposed to repel them.
But we are growing them in ground. Strangely, they seem to be bothered less in the ground, perhaps because the area is less open (it's a large community garden of over 100 plots).
Finally, onion plants.
I may have been gardening since 1978, but the joy of seeing plants grow never leaves me and I thank my spouse, who does 99% of the veggie gardening work. I couldn't garden in my New York City apartment growing up except some flowers on a windowsill. I've been so fortunate all these years since.
Spring is moving so quickly. I have so many flower shots to show you and I'll probably never get to showing them all to you.
Before we know it, harvest time will be here for these veggies. But I never forget their humble beginnings.
Do you garden?
Today, in the birding world (a world I discovered thanks, in part, to the pandemic) it is Big Day. This is a worldwide effort that runs, in your own time zone, on Saturday from a second past midnight to a minute to midnight. 24 hours to bird and record your sightings.
All you need is an eBird (a worldwide bird checklist and database account. We had the mobile app for a brief time, but both my phone and my spouse's, are pretty stuffed and the app takes up a lot of room. But eBird works if all you have is a computer, browser, and Internet access.
They said even 10 minutes in your backyard helps (if I can figure out how to enter our findings on eBird) but we decided to go down to our local park. Right now, I'm fighting an infection I'm prone to, and seasonal vertigo. The antibiotic for the infection has me a little unsettled, so I'm not much into travel right now.
But the wonderful thing about distracting yourself with Nature is that you make unexpected finds.
Watching at least 18 Canada geese float down the Susquehanna River was good for the soul, but, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a large butterfly fluttering over a large grassy area. I decided to follow it and whipped out my iPhone SE 1st edition (yup, still agonizing over a new phone).
To my delight, it alighted on a dandelion but would it stay along enough for me to get a photographic capture?
It did!
I figured out it was a kind of swallowtail, but didn't know what kind.
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| So intent on feeding that I was able to get these shots |
Back home, I did some searching and finally (I think) have an ID. Drum roll:
Giant swallowtail, which was mentioned as the largest butterfly in North America. I didn't think it was that much larger than a monarch, but maybe it was a male (which run smaller than females).
The horizontal band looks white in some of these pictures but in the field, it was yellow.
Anyway, so far, our bird count is 3 house finches (2 females and a male), 2 tufted titmice (fed several seconds apart), and at least 18 Canada geese. We usually have black capped chickadees and sometimes white breasted nuthatches at our feeder this month, along with Northern cardinals and downy woodpeckers, so maybe we'll have better luck this afternoon. The ground feeding mourning dove usually shows up in the afternoon, too.
But in the meantime, if I hadn't been a bit under the weather, I never would have seen the giant swallowtail butterfly. I probably would have been going on an art trail about an hour away, and enjoying that. But, I've learned, there is always a silver lining somewhere when things don't go as expected, if you look hard enough.
That, I guess, is the lesson in today's Big Day.
A moment of beauty from today. I was out, and saw a monarch butterfly flying (I suspect they have started their migrations because I've seen a number of them in the past few days.
One alighted on a zinnia and let me take its picture.
According to symbolism, monarchs are symbols of rebirth and being on the right track on life.
I'm still a little under the spell of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, though, and I wanted to bring you some musical beauty. I had such a strange dream last night, maybe from watching the coverage of the 9/11 commemoration in my native New York City.
But I did want to share something else with you today before I go. I saw this performance, as it happened, on television.
It bought me to tears.
Here is Bruce Springsteen yesterday at the 9/11 commemoration held at the World Trade Center site in New York City, singing "I'll See You In My Dreams".
Usually, butterflies torment me. Either they don't get close to me, or they aren't close to me long enough to make for a good pictures.
Last week, this eastern black swallowtail butterfly was so intent on feeding on a milkweed plant that it didn't care that I was getting closer and closer to it.
Closer...
Joining Sandee at Comedy Plus for her #WordlessWednesday.
Today, I remembered I promised my readers a picture of a mystery butterfly I've seen many times during walks on a local flood wall.
I think I have it ID'd and a friend who knows something about butterflies agrees - but what I am finding is that if I thought it was hard to learn different birds (spouse is way ahead of me in that department), or photograph butterflies and moths are impossible.
I am in the Southern Tier of New York State, about an hour
north of Scranton, Pennsylvania.
So, check this little guy out. I had to crop the picture a bit inconveniently because right next to the little one was one of the many gifts left by our local Canada Geese. Anyway, there's also a blade of grass blocking part of the view.
This one may be better. I didn't want to crop it further because my iPhone doesn't do macros well. And butterflies don't like phones too close to them, anyway.
This, apparently, is a pearl crescent. They are small, as butterflies go, and only fly a foot or two off the ground. They love to bask in the sun with their wings spread, or until spouse and I come walking. But also, on a site I went to, it said they are one of the hardest varieties to ID.
Whatever these butterflies were, they sure were pretty and fun to watch.
Even if ID'ing them is a bit elusive.
