Today it seemed appropriate to remember the Irish
poet Seamus Heaney who died a couple of weeks ago, so Dale Hoyt read one of his
poems. (Note: The flax-dam in the poem is a pond in which the stems of Flax stems are placed in the
water to rot, releasing the fibers that were used to make linen. Many Irish towns had such flax dams.)
Death of
a Naturalist
All year the
flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland;
green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted
there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered
in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled
delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze
of sound around the smell.
There were
dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was
the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that
grew like clotted water
In the shade of the
banks. Here, every spring
I would fill
jampotfuls of the jellied
Specks to range on
window-sills at home,
On shelves at
school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots
burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles.
Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was
called a bullfrog
And how he croaked
and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of
little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You
could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were
yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.
Then one hot day
when fields were rank
With cowdung in the
grass the angry frogs
Invaded the
flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse
croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was
thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam
gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their
loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop
were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud
grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned,
and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there
for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my
hand the spawn would clutch it.
We planned to focus on butterflies again today,
but it was cool when we began, not a good sign for butterfly activity.
Butterflies prefer hot, sunny weather, so we left the parking lot with low
expectations. But with so many sharp-eyed participants it wasn't long before we
found lots of interesting creatures.
NOTE: All photographs following were taken by Don Hunter.
Click here to see more of Dan's great pictures.
At an arbor on which Blue Passionflower (Passiflora caerulea) was growing someone
spotted a number of orange and purple caterpillars -- the larval stage of the
Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae).
Several of these were large enough that they were probably close to
metamorphosing into the next stage, the pupa (called a chrysalis in
butterflies). And, sure enough, another
sharp-eyed person spotted an empty chrysalis attached to the arbor itself.
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| Golden Garden Spider on web |
The center of the web has a distinct band of silk called a stabilimentum. The function of this structure is unknown, but one hypothesis is that it warns birds of the presence of the web. The stabilimentum reflects UV light and birds have the ability to see in the UV part of the spectrum. They may avoid tangling up their feathers if they can see there is a web ahead and swerve to avoid it.
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| Yum, yum! |
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| A spidery sack lunch. |
And then Donna spotted the trophy of the day: A spherical, brown thing the size of a golf-ball
suspended by a network of silken thread from leaves at the edge of the spider's
web. This was the egg case of the Golden Garden Spider!
Two more spider signs were observed, the webs
of the Spiny-backed Orbweaver (Gasteracantha
cancriformis) and the egg cases of a Basilica Orbweaver [?] (Mecynogea lemniscata). The eggs cases of
the latter species are long chains of cases suspended from silken "clothes
lines." The web of the Spiny-backed Orbweaver has characteristic silk
supports -- stretches of thin silk
alternate with thicker, fuzzy silk. This is characteristic of this species, so
if you see such a web you don't have to see the spider to know who made it.
Someone asked about anoles changing color. The
American Chameleon is not a true chameleon. It can only change from green to
brown and vice-versa. They are usually green when foraging in vegetation and
change to brown when cold. But they also become green when frightened, as when
they are handled.
The scoliid wasps are
interesting. They are parasitoids of the grubs of scarab beetles that live in
the ground. (A June bug is an example of a scarab beetle.) They dig into the
ground to find the grub, sting it and then lay an egg on it. The egg hatches
and the wasp larva feeds on the paralyzed grub. The adult wasps feed on nectar.
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| A "long-horned" grasshopper |
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| A "short-horned" Grasshopper (missing the jumping legs) |
Wow! An hour had gone by and we
had barely gone 500 feet!
Pausing at an arbor supporting the vines of a hop plant we noticed that some of the leaves were extensively damaged and surrounded by silk webs. This was due to the activity of caterpillars. Some species protect themselves by enclosing their food plant in silk webbing, preventing parasitic wasps from gaining access. Many of the silk webs had been abandoned but others had small caterpillars covered with white fuzz. These are undoubtedly moth larvae, but I don't know what kind.
BTW: The hops that develop on the hop plant resemble the fruits of the Hop Hornbeam tree. That's the origin of its common name.
At the flower beds toward the other end of the garden we found some active butterflies. We caught and examined a Fiery Skipper (Hylephila phyleus), Gulf Fritillary, Red-spotted Purple (Limenitis arthemis astyanax) and Sleepy Orange (Eurema nicippe). Some of us also saw a Buckeye (Junonia coenia), Cloudless Sulphur(Phoebis sennae), and female Tiger Swallowtail (the dark form) (Papilio glaucus).
After which we retired as usual for
conversation and snacks at Donderos'.
Dale
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