Archive for the 'Fieldnotes' Category

Bird of Many Feathers

Doing some quick internet searching, I see that songbirds can have from 1500-3000 individual feathers. Swans can have as many as 25,000.

Robber Flies & Dragonflies





Wasps II

These are roughly in size order:Great Black Wasp. These pictures do not convey the sheer giganticness of this species. They are big and fast, really moving between flowers. They hunt katydids, crickets, and grasshoppers for their young.The Great Golden Digger Wasp. Crickets, katydids, grasshoppers, beware.European Paper Wasp. Know them by their red/orange antenna. I’ve seen them take down Monarch caterpillars and feast on the adult butterflies, too. Black and Yellow Mud-dauber. Also known as Yellow-legged Mud-dauber. Spider-hunter.Two different individuals in separate places. Blue Mud-dauber or Steel-blue Cricket Hunter? There sure are a lot of these things… still working on figuring out this one.

Wasp Ascendency

Cicada-killer, whose name speaks for itself. A husky wasp that provisions its young with paralyzed cicadas, so really it’s the larva who kill the cicadas…Unknown. Possibly one of the Grass-carrying wasps of the genus Isodontia.Another Isodontia, possibly. Members of this genus use grass in the construction of their nests and prey on crickets and other Orthoptera.Humped Beewolf (Philanthus gibbosus), a bee predator.Unknown.Four-banded Stink Bug Hunter Wasp (Bicyrtes quadrifasciatus). I didn’t know there were stink bug hunter wasps.One of the Ichneumonn wasps. Says bugguide.net: “Ichneumonids are notoriously hard to identify: aside from the sheer number of species, there are numerous cases of distant relatives that appear almost identical. Any identification based solely on comparing images should be treated as suspect unless an expert has said there are no lookalikes for the species or group in question.” Note those leaf galls. Is this wasp an inquiline, a species that takes over other species’ galls for itself? By the way, the parasites themselves may be parasitized by other species.Ah, the old Four-toothed Mason Wasp (Monobia quadridens), with Carpenter Bee for scale. This big one hunts caterpillars for its young.

All the wasps on the blog. But wait! Tomorrow there will be a whole series of other wasps lately seen…

Raptor Wednesday

This is a young male American Kestrel. He brought some bird prey to this balustrade recently, and left it on the right hand corner. You can just see the lump. It was there for more than an hour as he flew here and here, perching here and there as well. Now, this building has been used as larder for two breeding seasons, but the falcons usually leave prey on the roof, under, I presume, the solar panels. The parapet prevents me from seeing the exact locations, but I suspect they know not to leave meat exposed. Too many sharp-eyed corvids about for that. Junior here probably has to learn the hard way.Another brightly spotty male. He zoomed past the Gothick entrance to Green-Wood, causing the parakeets to holler in fury. Perched atop a tree, he was the target of a Northern Mockingbird, who made several passes at him. Then he circled in ever widening circles overhead, moving off towards the northeast and actually chasing after a Chimney Swift, twice. Now, Falco cousins, the Hobbys, are supposed to be able to catch Common Swifts (Apus apus), which are bigger than our Chimney Swifts (Chaetura pelagica), but I think it would pretty unusual for an American Ks to catch a healthy CS. Another reason I think this was a young kestrel. Trying things out.

The last five mornings I’ve awoken to a Kestrel calling. The earliest was 5:30 a.m. Haven’t seen one, but the call is unmistakable.



~ Toni Morrison, RIP.

Flower Fiends


Genus Ardea

Two juvenile Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias) and a Great Egret (Ardea alba) were hanging out at the same “water” in Green-Wood recently. Ardea is Latin for heron, herodias is Greek for heron. Alba is white. The egret was scarfing down small fry with abandon. Never saw either of the herons make a strike. (“Heron” and “egret” are basically interchangeable, but we’ll go with the common name distinction.)And the herons were much jumpier, stirred up by people and vehicles. Last year a juvenile here seemed quite unconcerned by people. Different experiences, different personalities.


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