The rest of the bugs and a few other critters... Willowbrook Wildlife Center - 6.18.11, post 2

So here are the rest of the bugs and the amphibians I saw when I was out last weekend.

The firey skippers are making their way back out.  I know there were scads of them at the South Pond last year, but I haven't seen them out there yet.  This was the only skipper I found at WWC.  But the summer's young. :)

 When I shot this, I thought it was an ant, it was so small. There's a reason for that - it's called (from what I could find in the research, though, oy, this was not easy!) it's called an Ant Spider, or an Ant Mimic Spider. Photographically speaking, I love the starkness of the red and black against the white rocks.  (And for the record, yes, I lumped the arachnid in with the insects.)

I'm pretty sure this is a Cabbage White butterfly.  No spots on the outsides of the wings, black tips on the inside.

 And with the nice warm weather came some really fun spottings.  Bullfrogs!  Lots of bull frogs.  Many, many of them heard me long before I saw them and lept into the water before I could get at all close.  Those guys have some stretch.  Some were hitting the water about ten feet out from the banks!

 This guy was not at all afraid of me.  He watched me as I watched him.  He even sat there while I changed the data card in my camera (timing is everything).

 And in case you couldn't see the one in the water, they're good sized frogs.  I'd guess five inches, nose to vent.  Probably over a foot when you stretch out those monster back legs.

 Which puts these guys in really, really stark contrast.  First of all, they're insanely small.  Probably 1 cm nose to vent.  Maybe 2 with their legs.

These little buggers are making me insane.  I cannot figure out what they are.  They're *probably* toads.  The skin is rough and dry and when I walked near them, they scattered, but I don't remember seeing or hearing even one of them going into the water.

 I love the false eyes on the back of their heads.  I also find it interesting that his eyes are flush with his head.  Most frogs have those, well, you know... frog eyes where their eyes sit on top of their heads so they can leave just their eyes above the surface of the water and keep an eye out for lunch.  His eyes on on the sides more than the top.

I was even able to find an itty-bitty tadpole committee.  They have stripes on their tales that will be the stripes on their legs and spots on the bodies of both the tadpoles and the adults.





Okay, one last post on this trip tomorrow. :)  For today, little tiny frogs/toads and ant spider are added to the list which gives me 41 new species for the year.  Almost there!

Something's Bugging Me about This Post - Willowbrook WC - 6.16.11, post 1

So I mentioned in my last post that I was heading off to Willowbrook Wildlife Center again, this time as part of a volunteer work crew.  It was a great experience, and the brief walk I took through the center afterwards yielded a lot of great shots, but first I received some bad news.

My grebe died.  They said that at first he seemed to be doing well and eating on his own, but about a month after he was brought in something compromised his lungs and they were unable to save him.  I know they did everything they could; they're a remarkable facility, but I'm still kind of bummed.

Anyway, there were five people on our work crew and our job was to clear out a couple of invasive species in a section of the prairie.  We were pulling out Honeysuckle and Buckthorn and there was a *ton* of it.  In three hours we cleared about one-hundred square feet.  That doesn't sound like a lot for fifteen man-hours, but it was hot and the work was pretty intense.  We made a roughly ten feet deep, by six feet wide by six feet tall pile of brush to be burned.

There were some phenomenal insects and spiders unearthed in doing this, and the best way to get them at the time was to shoot them on my phone, so I did.  Of course the very next day, before I'd had a chance to move any of the shots, my card corrupted and I lost the pictures.  Oh well.

It was about 85* F out there and we'd been working pretty hard (and dragging up All The Pollen Ever!) and I was in jeans and work boots, so I didn't stay too long to get pictures afterwards.  I walked around the pond as far as I could go (they have a section blocked off) and did a bit on the trails.  But even in the hour and a half or so I was out there, there was a lot of cold-blooded critter activity.

In fact, I'm going from pretty much an all-bird blog, to an all-bug blog!  Mostly, but not entirely.  Well, entirely for this post.

This shot was an accident.  I was actually trying to get the wildflower and the bee flew in.  It's a bumblebee, of that I'm sure.  ProjectNoah tells me it's a Megachilid bee, probably Osmia.

This is a Six-Spotted Tiger Beetle.  He's an amazing iridescent green with a white face.  He's pretty small, maybe two centimeters long?

 Tiny dragonfly is tiny!  This is a Calico Pennant.  Lovely little bug with little hearts on their tails.  But small, for dragonflies. I'd say their bodies are between 1/3 and 1/2 the size of the 'normal' dragonflies I usually see like the Pondhawks or Saddlebags.

And for this particular day, they were also the most calm and easiest to shoot.

I have to say, these are the most ironic dragonflies for me.  They're called "Common Whitetails", but I rarely see them.  I saw one a the North Pond last year and there was only a few of them here.  Not so common!

Okay, photographically lously, but at least you can see the White when it's all spread out.  The big splotches on the wings and the light body make them pretty easy to recognize, even in flight.

This is a very small grasshopper, only 3 or 4 cm long.  I'm still trying to find out what kind he is.  Anyone have an idea?

A new dragonfly!  This is a Jade Clubtail.  They're significantly different than the other green dragonflies I've seen before.  I knew right away that this was something new.

They like to perch on the lily pads which is unusual.  If you look through most of my dragonfly shots, you'll notice that they usually like to land on sticks, reeds and grasses that are sticking up out of the water.

I believe this is an Eastern Comma.  It's a Comma of some sort, but because I couldn't get a good shot of her with her wings open, I'm not one-hundred percent sure which one it is.






 

This was the best shot I could get of the tops of the wings.  Not much help.












Okay, that's eleven shots.  Enough for one post.  More bugs and a few other critters and plants, later.

So let's see... the comma, the jade, the calico, and the tiger beetle.  Four new named species.  39 total of my 50.

Last New Species post for North Pond - 5.10.10

So I thought I was done with new species for this trip, but then I started going through the shots I'd oh-so-cleverly labeled things like "CheckThisBird" and "UnknownSparrow".

 The first thing I found was this dragonfly wheel.  Unlike the pondhawks I had a ton of last year, this is apparently a Common Green Darner.  He's different because instead of having a solid, dusty, light blue tail, he has a darker green tail with brown marks on it.  He's also *huge*.

 After a few hundred painted turtles, I finally found something a little different.  This is apparently a False Map Turtle.  According to Wikipedia, When with other turtles, they also are very communal, sharing space and using each other for predator watching, increasing the odds of surviving an attack by any unwanted animal. Which explains why every time I saw one of these, they were hanging out with the bigger, more obvious, painted turtles. :)

Like this:

 A False Map hanging out with a group of Sliders.

 Not a new species, but in case you haven't noticed, I find sexual dimorphism fascinating.  This is the female Common Yellow-throat Warbler.

 The folks at the fabulous Project Noah site had to help me with this one.  Turns out he's a Lincoln's Sparrow.  They migrate through Chicago, but apparently don't stay.  So I was lucky to catch him as he passed through town.

 Here you can see his identifying head stripes a little bit better.

 This one is still throwing us for a loop at Project Noah.  He's a wren.  We know that much.  The white eyestripe makes me think he's a Carolina Wren.  But the Carolina Wrens have a very white chin, and this guy doesn't seem to have that.  The Marsh Wren is similar in coloring, but doesn't have the white eyestripe.  Any suggestions gratefully accepted! :)

 Another view, in case it helps. :)

 Something else that needs an I.D.  It's a beetle.  It was digging around in the bark chips on the path of the North Pond.  Any ideas?







Okay, so, I'm not entirely sure what they all *are*, but there's five new species in this post.  So now I'm at 28 of my 50, and the butterflies and dragonflies and most of the cold-bloodeds haven't really started making an appearance yet.  I may have to up my goal. :)

Rollins Savanna - 9.20.10 - Post 1

Rollins Savanna - Grayslake, Illinois.  This trip, in hindsight had more ups than downs, but it did have a couple big drawbacks and the Universe was determined to make this not be an easy trip.

First of all, I Googled the place, read the website and it sounded great.  "One of the largest uninterrupted savannas in Illinois."  Sounds good, right?  What they didn't say is, "And we've plopped it right in the middle of several busy suburban neighborhoods."  I give this place a C- for one major reason - I could never hike far enough out to be clear of the noise of traffic.  No matter where I was in the park, I could hear cars or trains or both.  At one point I even heard a massive car crash (I hope everyone was alright - it didn't sound good at all).  From most points I could see the traffic light at the parking lot entrance and/or large tracts of modern houses.

I did see plenty of wildlife, which was great for a fall walk, but it might have been even better if the on-again, off-again rain would have stayed more off-again.  As it was, it was dry for the hour drive up there, but as I got about a quarter-mile up the trail it started to sprinkle.  I didn't mind getting me wet so much, but the camera equipment would not have approved, so I booked it back to the car. I could see a break in the clouds, so I figured I'd sit in the car and read a book for half an hour and see where we were.  Twenty minutes later, it had stopped so I set back out.  I got about half or three-quarters of a mile up the same road this time before the rain started again.  So, again, I turned around and headed back.  Only this time it stopped before I even made it back to the car.  But I really didn't want to see the first bit of that same trail a third time - it wasn't that interesting the first two times.  So I went around to the left instead, and fortunately after that the rain held off.


Before I was even out of the car and set up to hike, I saw these two birds of prey circling me.

I know northern Illinois has Red Tailed Hawks, but I'm not sure if this is one.  (I didn't do anything to 'remove' the background on this shot... it just happens to be the same white as the blog's text box.  Weird.)

Something about the way this one moved made me think it was too body-heavy to be a falcon.  I know I heard at least one owl.  Could this be him?

This body shape makes me think this one was a falcon.

I think I shot all of these with my kit lens - I hadn't even had a chance to put on my telephoto yet, so they're crap shots.  I need to actually set up with the tripod somewhere and wait for something to come into view and see if I can get some better ones.

This bee is on a New England Aster Plant.  Most flowering plants are done at this point, but these asters seem to still be going strong.

I'm fairly sure this is a Red-Eyed Vireo.  I saw a lot of these guys, but I couldn't get a really, really sharp shot of any of them because they're highly skittish.

 So the leaves are changing.  Most of them slowly going yellow or occasionally red.  This tree, for some reason, seemed to be heading for a bright "Tang" orange. (Anyone else remember Tang?  Do they even make that stuff any more?)

 Two Bull Thistle flowers.  I love that these are coming off the same stem, yet one is purple, one is white, one is closed and one is open...  I'm pretty sure the one on the right is going to seed.  You have to wonder how they didn't mature at the same rate.

 My bee on the aster again.  Look how clearly defined his wing veins are.  Love that!  Also, the joints in his legs are clear.  He was being highly cooperative. :)

Another Vireo.  Like I said lots of these at this park.

Another crap picture, but I finally saw a deer!  I'd seen the hoofprint at Volo, but I hadn't seen an actual live one all summer.  This guy was running down the length of the fence.










Lots more to come.  This walk had a few false starts, but once I got moving, there was more to see than I initially thought there would be.

Volo Bog - 9.04.10 - Post 3

Still working on Volo Bog.  The more I look at these shots the more I realize that while a lot of them aren't *bad*, a lot more of them would be *good* if I could be bothered to schlep my tripod more often.

Honeybee on Flower Bulb

Here's a pretty decent shot of a honeybee.  This was snapped in a windier moment and you can see how the bee has dug in to the flower with not only his legs, but his antennae in order to hold in such lovely weather

Pollen Collecting Makes for a Busy Bee

Okay, so you learn something new everyday that you blog.  That bright orange spot on this honeybee?  A pollen sack.  From Honeybee Anatomy and Physiology:

The back leg is the most interesting leg. This has rows of little brushes called pollen combs which are used to pass pollen up the leg. As it makes this journey, the pollen is moistened with a bit of nectar so the bee can knead it into a pellet and then place it on a spike that we call the "pollen sack". 

So we can be certain that this guy has, in fact, been a busy little bee. :)
 

Clouds Over Volo Bog

These next two shots are some of my all time favorites, which is unusual for me since I don't do a lot of landscapes.  Thes are shots from a bird and bog overlook at on the Tamarack Trail.  I took some shots, ate my lunch and then shot some more.  These strike me so much as watercolors more than photographs.  This one was done with the telephoto lens on, pulled back as far as I could.  I love the look of the clouds as well as the fact that in the break in the duckweed, the water is so still you can see the reflection of that tree that's sticking out over the water in the center of the picture.

A Break in the Clouds

Same place, different lens.  I put on the kit lens to get a wider view.  By the time I finished my lunch there was a very small break in the clouds, giving the photo a new focal point and brightening the clouds.

Common Darter, a Long Way from Home?

Back to the telephoto and the small world again.  A new dragonfly for me.  Everything I find online shows me that this should be a Common Darter.  Thing about Common Darters is that they live in Europe and there is no listing (that I can find) of them having a population in the U.S.  (The only thing I find is other people going, "I swear this is a Common Darter, but those don't live in the U.S. so...?) If this IS a Common Darter, it's a mature female - the females start off dark yellow and turn chocolate-brown as they age.  Sure looks right to me.

Common Darter, Face First

Same critter, different angle.  You can see, slightly better, the white face and her wings.  If anyone knows for sure what kind of dragonfly I have here, I'd love to get your input.

Buckeye: Side View

Buckeyes are ridiculously friendly to photographers.  They tend to land in the open and don't seem overly bothered when a human creeps up on them. 

Buckeye: Facing Front

I was even able to pass her and come around and shoot her face from a different angle. (BTW, unless there's an obvious coloration difference between the genders or other obvious sign of gender, I randomly assign genders to the critters I shoot.  I don't like referring to them as 'it' if I can avoid it.)

Yellow Bee on Goldenrod

Yes, another bee.  What I like about this one is not only that the bee is nice and clear, but the only part of the picture in focus is the bee and the branch he's hanging on and the leaf right next to him.

Questionable Caterpillar

Please help!  I'm reasonably sure this is some kind of caterpillar.  He's caterpillar-shaped and has little caterpillar-type feet visible near the left-hand side.  But searching is getting me absolutely nowhere.  The problem with Google is that when you search for "pink caterpillar" you don't just get 'baby butterflies and moths'.  You get about 75 million cutesy little companies for baby clothes or cloth lunch bags.  So I'd love it if someone could help me identify this guy.

That's ten... I'm maybe half-way done with the shots from this hike.  All in all, it was a pretty good day behind the camera.

Saganashkee Slough - 8.25.10 - Post 1

So it was another "Google Roulette" shoot. I Google my area and see if I can't find a place that looking interesting. This time I put in "Cook County" and got the website for the Cook County Forest Preserve. So I plunked around for a while and decided on Saganashkee Slough. Now, I'm not sure what the difference is between a slough and a pond, but basically, it was a big pond, maybe a small lake.

There isn't much online about this place. Including an address I can actually feed into my GPS. If you fish, there's some data, but otherwise not much.

The one site I did find was all "OMG ducks! 17 different kinds of ducks in one day!" Me? I didn't see one duck. Canadian Geese, sure (but I am so over them) and a couple of herons, and some gulls I need to Google, but not one duck.

Now, like I said, the directions to this place are a bit sketchy.  I basically went to 107th and Willow Brook Road in Palos Park and drove until I found it.  The FPDCC owns a lot of land out that way.  For reasons I don't understand, about every six square feet of forest preserve gets it's own name.  If you drive up the street, the parking lot on the left leads to one named woods, the the parking lot on the left will take you to some meadow.  Drive another half a mile and now you're at Some Other Woods on the right and A Different Woods on the left.  Very odd.  But it makes finding the places that aren't so well mapped a little harder.

When I finally found a sign that said Saganashkee Slough, I stopped at that parking lot, where people were basically fishing from their tailgates and trunks. There was a path into the woods off to the left, but there was a rope across it and it said "Closed".   I couldn't see a good reason for it to be closed so I hiked up about a quarter of a mile and turned back. I couldn't see a good reason to keep going through woods where the only wildlife was massive swarms of huge mosquitoes. And after The Obnoxious, Unending Tick Incident that still isn't over, I don't want to tempt West Nile disease. Because these suckers? Very unimpressed with the repellent I bought on my way out today.

Speaking of the Unending Tick Incident... I've apparently hit some kind of critical mass in the antibiotics they gave me.  I was told they might make me "a little photosensitive", but when I was out today, direct, unfiltered sunlight actually HURT.  I mean, this has to be what being a vampire feels like!  In the shadows, fine; step into the sun and my hands started to burn.  I'm going to be ridiculously glad to get off these stupid meds.

So I got in the car and drove up to the next parking lot. More people fishing, and talking and generally being annoying, no paths and no easy access to the water.

So I got back in the car and drove to yet another parking lot. If you decide to head out to this place, this is where you want to go. It's on 107th Street and is listed as the Boat Launch. Which, you know, is because it has a boat launch.  There were no boaters today, just some people fishing off the pier.

At first I was pretty disappointed. I could get to the water periodically, but I wasn't seeing much. I did get one frog and a few butterflies. I went into the Savannah area for a bit and got some butterflies and grasshoppers, but there was nothing there that I couldn't get at the Chicago Ponds.

But the path (which is to the right of the parking lot, when you're facing the water) was open, so I started walking around the pond. This path is clearly maintained, but it's done badly.  They cut down the trees that have started growing between the rocks, but they leave about six inches of wood sticking up out of the ground.  And they don't get to these trees until they stumps are about three inches across, so they aren't little avoidable things.  I don't know about everyone else, but when I'm shooting, I'm not concentrating on where I'm putting my feet.  So a number of these things caused me near-collisions with either the ground or lake below me.

What I saw, but couldn't shoot:
• A pair of male and female green hummingbirds. I'm so disappointed that I didn't even get a *bad* picture of these things. But if you know hummingbirds, you know how fast they are.
• A falcon or eagle. Some large bird of prey. I could hear it at all three stops, and I saw it at the first stop, but it always stayed too far away to get it "on film".
• A water snake. As I was walking around the edge of the pond I heard a splash and saw a snake slither along the 'coast', duck under and slither across some more. I didn't even know Illinois HAD snakes that could swim!

These are the things that make me think that going back to this place wouldn't be a total waste of time, but overall, I'd give the place a C+ for now.  Maybe during migratory season it'll be more interesting.

I did manage to get some good shots.

For me the big thing that makes a trip a success is finding something new.  A new species or variant or something.

Today I found...

Green Bee, Purple Flower

A Green Bee.  Kind of like the Green Frog, it's just called "Green Bee" - it's the species, not just being descriptive.  From what I've found online, basically they're a species of sweatbee.

Green Bee, Purple Flower II

Here she is a little closer.  This is likely a female since her abdomen is darker than her head and thorax.

Little Red... I dunno What.

Here's a creepy little dude.  A grasshopper with a stinger?  Not really.  It's a species of long-horned grasshopper with an ovipositor.

All the Google in the world couldn't find me a species name.  Anyone have an idea?  She was pretty small and her wings are pretty underdeveloped, so it's possible that she's a juvenile.

Not So Common As They'd Have You Think

This is apparently a Common Whitetail Dragonfly.  Though, he's the second one I've seen and the tails always look more blue to me.  Just as I was about to write the whole trip off as a loss, this guy landed on the path right in front of me. :)

Text Book Perfect Pearl Crescent

Like Midewin, the Pearl Crescents were out in force.  I love this shot, you can actually see the stripes on his antennae.  And he was showing off his wings so very nicely for me.

Lone Bird

There weren't many birds sitting where I could catch them.  There were herons on the banks *way* far away from me and the hawk overhead, but here a female Red Winged Black Bird sat and posed for a minute.

Big Bee on Row of Little

I love this shot.  This is probably the closest, clearest, largest shot I've gotten of a bee.  I love how you can see his legs between the flowers and how he seems to be holding on with his antennae.

Stamens Throw Shadows

The chicory flowers are starting to wither.  But This one still had very prominent stamens that were giving some great shadows today.

Thistle Starts to Seed

Bull Thistles are starting to go to seed.  Oddly this plant's higher blossoms had dried already and the little fuzzy seeds were starting to blow away, while this lower flower was still in bloom.

Two Prickly Characters

And while they're blooming, the bees are still visiting.










More pictures tomorrow.  And less rambling narrative. :)