Great Blue and Other Interesting Sightings

  Great blue heron (GBH) has been a common sight here at the Museum for the past eight years. Most of that time there was one present on a daily basis in the Wetlands. I’m afraid, though, our long time resident GBH has left us. I don’t know why our local GBH has moved on or whether or not it has expired, but I have not seen it. I keep a weekly checklist of all the birds I see here at the Museum, check it offRead more

Harvester Chrysalis and other Insect and Flora News From the Wild

I’ve been keeping an eye out for a chrysalis on the hazel alder in Explore the Wild. Last week there were at least four harvester caterpillars on the plant. This past Saturday (8/30) I noticed one of the larva crawl off and away from the aphids it had been munching on. I suspected it was going off to pupate. Apparently though, it hadn’t enough to eat and turned back around towards the place from which it had come, it couldRead more

Harvester Laying Eggs on the Alder

After complaining (mildly) about not being able to locate adult harvester butterflies in the vicinity of an alder on the north side of the Wetlands, which has plenty of woolly aphids and caterpillars munching on them, I spotted one. I was getting ready to make the rounds at the end of the day when I saw a small orangish butterfly zip by and through the vegetation just west of the infested alder. Although I felt sure that it was aRead more

Red, White, and Blue, sort of

The red I heard the call of the hawk before I saw it. As I turned, the bird came in to a Loblolly Pine over the Train Station here at the Museum. It was carrying something of weight and bulk in its talons though I couldn’t make out what it was. The bird began to call out, keee-eeeer, keee-eeeer, keee-eeeer! I could hear another bird calling as well, a whiny and slower keeeear…keeear…keear. As I looked up the other hawkRead more

The Harvester

Just a few weeks ago I posted about woolly aphids on the Hazel Alder here in our Wetlands. In that post I mentioned the possibility of Harvesters, the only North American carnivorous butterfly, making an appearance. Well, they have arrived…at least in caterpillar form. Of course, for the caterpillars to be here there had to have been a butterfly present at some point to lay eggs. It must have done its egg laying while I was making the rounds, becauseRead more