Paulie's Quest

I know this is supposed to be a bird blog but sometimes, other creatures make their way in front of my camera lens and into my story line. This week, many of those creatures had wings but no feathers. I found these beauties in The Villages while visiting my mother on her birthday (Happy Birthday Mom). The first is Fiery Skipper. Fiery indeed. Bright orange!

Fiery Skipper

This guy caught my eye with his long tail. Remarkably, the species is Long-tailed Skipper. Go figure.

Long-tailed Skipper

 I didn't even notice that he had a bright green/teal body under those long wings.

Long-tailed Skipper

And then there was this eye catcher. It is a Gulf Fritillary. Zoom in to see the checkered eyeball.

Gulf Fritillary

 Hard to believe that this is the same butterfly seen from the top. Beautiful orange.

Gulf Fritillary

I was feeling pretty good about seeing all of these beautiful butterflies and headed back to my Mom's house where I found her neighbor Paulie there talking about the same thing - butterflies. He invited us to his house to check them out. We found this magnificent Monarch in his garden. There were others too.

Monarch Butterfly

And then we found out why. Seems Paulie has become a nursemaid in his retirement. The porch has incubators where caterpillars turn into butterflies. Here he is with the newest members of his Monarchy.

Paulie

Close up of the cocoons with the new butterflies. The butterflies come out with shriveled up wings and hang on the cocoon for a few hours before the wings are ready for duty. Paulie lets them out once they are "dry".

New Monarchs

Here is Connie letting one out.

Connie

Paulie finds the caterpillars in gardens around the neighborhood and brings them inside where he feeds them milkweed until they form a cocoon, then releases the Monarchs to continue their life cycle. Pretty cool.

Damn You Harvey!

Summer is typically a slow time of year for birding. It also happens to be when my birthday falls. Both of those things have lead me to fall into a trap set by my friend Harvey. He didn't intend on setting the trap but he set it anyway. Now I'm "bugging" with him. What's bugging? Bugging is going out "birding" but looking at bugs instead. I'm snapping photos of dragonflies like this one that perched with the Cape May lighthouse in the background.

Here is the same dragonfly closer. You can still see the beige lighthouse. Mean looking sucker huh?

This one is so skinny and clear that I have probably walked past a million of them without noticing.

I don't know the names of any of them. I shot this photo on Saturday at Higbee. The place was lousy with dragonflies. This is a really good photo if I do say so myself. Great lighting, blurred background, and mostly in focus. You can see the little hairs on the head and body.

And then there are other bugs like this really shiny beetle.

And this moth that flies like a hummingbird. We call it a Hummingbird Moth but I'm sure it has another name.

All of that is fine but the real attraction is butterflies. Harvey knows all about them and even bought me a butterfly field guide for my birthday. Ugh. Finding names for butterflies is harder than birding.

This one landed on Barbara's hat at Hyner Run. It was licking the moisture off of it.

And then there are the little ones. Harvey helped me name them all.

Frosted Elfin

Banded Hairstreak

Silver-spotted Skipper

Spring Azure

Anyway, now I'm trudging around looking at bugs and butterflies with Harvey. He's a real friend. He even has Connie out with her camera snapping photos of butterflies!

Back in the USA

The trip to Europe was great but the timing was terrible. I all but missed the spring migration in our area by being out of the country in May. Once Memorial Day rolls around, there is not much in the way of bird life to keep us interested. Here are a few stories from the weekend.

Barbara and I got up early on Sunday and headed out to Hidden Valley Ranch in Cape May to chase a Painted Bunting that has been hanging around for over a month. This poor guy is way out of his normal range which is down in the deep south. Nonetheless, he was singing his little heart out trying to woo a gal - a nonexistent gal. It's going to be a lonely spring for him.

Painted Bunting

It's only May and we already know that the summer is going to be full of ticks. I was covered with them within the first 100 yards of the walk to find the bunting. Even the birds were covered with ticks. Check out this Carolina Wren. He has 2 ticks on his face. I cropped the photo so you could see them - one between the eye and beak, the other below the eye.

Carolina Wren - with ticks

I was covered with ticks again today when Harvey and I headed out to see if there were any interesting birds around. No neat birds but we found a few neat butterflies. Butterflies have really weird names. Thankfully, Harvey knew what they were.

Hayhurst's Scallopwing

Red-striped Hairstreak

Speaking of butterflies, Di, Barbara and I put in 2 new gardens at the Blue House this spring - all in an attempt to attract butterflies and hummingbirds to the yard. I used Pat Sutton's plant list as a guide. You can find it at New Jersey Audubon website (Click Here) .

Shade Garden

Sun Garden

If you build it, they will come. The plants weren't in the ground for an hour and viola - our first butterfly - a Skipper.

Skipper in the garden

It's not the most attractive butterfly, but you can see that he/she loves the flowers. Check out the long black tongue probing the Bluestar (amsonia).

Skipper

Harvey and I were scolded by a pair of Bald Eagles today. We inadvertently got too close to their nest. Boy were they pissed. We hustled off down the path to get away from the nest but not before they told us about it. I snapped a few photos on our way out of the woods. These are 2 different eagles - one is Mom and the other is Dad. The first one has something in it's talons.

Bald Eagle

Pissed off

More Florida Follow Up

We made our obligatory trip to Corkscrew Swamp - an Audubon sanctuary located in Immokolee just outside of Naples Florida. We usually see Barred Owls here but we were too early for the nesting season. We did get to see other birds including an assortment of warblers - which as you now are already gone from our northern areas. Yellow-throated Warbler is one of the earliest warblers to return to PA and NJ. I think it is because they winter in Florida rather than way down in South America.  Here is one picking bugs in the cypress trees.

Yellow-throated Warbler

Another fan favorite at Corkscrew is the Pileated Woodpecker. They come much closer to the trail than they do in other parks. Here is a male hammering away at a cypress. You can tell it's a male by the red mustache. Females only have red on the crest. 

Pileasted Woodpecker

Butterflies are also nice to see in November when we know that they are all gone from our area.  Here are 2 that showed well in the swamp.

Ruddy Daggerwing

White Peacock

White Ibis were taking a break from feeding. I caught this one resting on a log.

White Ibis

Crested Caracara are interesting birds. Half hawk, half vulture, they scavenge on dead things along the roads and in farm fields in the deep south. They are quite comfortable walking and running rather than flying through the fields. We often see them on the ground which is how we saw our first Caracara in Belize - flipping cow patties with it's powerful feet to find beetles underneath (eeewww) We have since seen them many times along the road out of Corkscrew and also in NJ and DE as vagrants.  We were not disappointed on this trip where Lori spotted 4 Caracaras along the road eating something that was hit by a car.  I jumped into the bed of our rented pick up truck to snap some photos.  This one captures the bird's field marks the best. You can see the "crest" of feathers hanging off the back of the head and the bare orange skin around the beak. 

Crested Caracara

One final bird from the trip is this immature Bald Eagle that soared and circled above me while I was out at a park in Punta Gorda. He was looking right at me - kinda gave me the creeps. 

Bald Eagle

I'm home for a while now - at least until Christmas.  

Double Skimmer with a Side of Butterflies

As promised - here are a few photos of Black Skimmers from last weekend.  My one true fan has implored me not to post the gross ones so I'll skip those for this post. 

I LOVE to photograph Skimmers. I take photos of them every time I see them. I can't stop myself.  It has something to do with the specialized bill.

Black Skimmer

They use that bill to find food. Basically, they fly along the water with the bottom of the bill in the water and hope that it hits something to eat, then they snap it shut.  Here is the "money shot" with 2 birds skimming together. Check out the wake they leave behind.

Black Skimmers

They skim along and then the reward - a fish!  Here is one of the birds with his prize and some seaweed too. Zoom in to see the fish up close.

Skimmer with Fish

And then there were butterflies. Lots of butterflies. I don't know anything about butterfly ID, so we made up our own names for most of them. This one is NOT a Monarch. It looks like a Monarch but it is smaller. It's called a Viceroy but we call it Cigarette.

Viceroy Butterfly

Buckeye

Yellow

Pearl Jam

Black Swallowtail

More to come. I have alot of stories and photos to offload this week.  I'll warn you if I post the circle of life photo.