August-October, 2021

I'm still catching up with 2021! Here are some assorted sights from our yard, meadow, and woods in August through October of this year.

Young Rose-breasted Grosbeaks were a steady presence in our yard in August, and they seemed to especially enjoy tasting a variety of plants in my vegetable garden. I would've preferred it if they didn't munch on the tomato and pepper blossoms -- those plants had a hard enough time already during this very wet summer -- but there were plenty of peas to go around, and I enjoyed seeing these rowdy young birds snacking away at the top of the pea trellis on August 2:

I think this young Rose-breasted Grosbeak may have struck a window on August 6 (a rare occurrence at our house, fortunately), because it sat for a few minutes on our upstairs balcony, allowing for some unusually close views before it flew off:

For the second year in a row, American Robins nested on the front of our house, making close neighbors with the Eastern Phoebes above our front door. On August 3, the stripey robin babies were looking alert and nearly ready to leave the nest:

This is actually the first year I've seen American Robins successfully produce new birds on our property -- the nests I've seen in the previous three years have all failed. And even better, there were a total of three successful American Robin broods on our property this year. Hooray for a productive year for robins!

The House Wrens were also productive this year, with two broods in their chosen nest box. Here's one of those young House Wrens on August 6:

On the morning of August 8, I was shocked to see a really big bird walking around next to our house. What in the world is a Great Blue Heron doing in our yard??

There are ponds and streams a short flight away from here, but we have no aquatic environments in our yard at all.... As it turned out, though, this Great Blue Heron was hunting food of the small furry variety, and our yard has plenty of those. We watched through a window as the heron snatched up a Meadow Vole:

Here's a closer view of the vole's plight (as clear as I could get through the window):

Down it goes:

The heron hunted over quite a bit of the yard. Look, there's a huge bird walking behind the cars (!):

The heron grabbed one more wriggling vole from the bank between the road and the driveway:

And then a passing runner startled the heron and it flew away. What a cool and unexpected visitor! Now I can add Great Blue Heron to the list of predators who sometimes stop by to keep our vole population in check.

We had so much rain this summer that our little pond in the woods kept water in it all year, instead of turning into a big muddy patch as it has done in previous years. On August 6, I was happy to see some Green Frogs hanging out in the water:

On August 8, I saw the cutest little Gray Treefrog (a young individual) in a patch of Orange Jewelweed in our yard:

I hear Gray Treefrogs frequently enough around here that they must be fairly common, but I so rarely get to see them. And this little creature was so adorable! It was climbing among the jewelweed stems, hunting tiny flying insects, and pausing long enough for a picture now and then:

This lovely Black Swallowtail showed up at the zinnias on our back deck on August 28:

While gardening in the front yard on September 3, I came across a couple of fun little creatures (and had only my phone's poor-quality camera to document them). This small Spotted Salamander was burrowed below ground, before I accidentally unearthed it:

And I found a really bizarre larva on Black Walnut leaves -- at first, I assumed this was a caterpillar infected with some sort of fungus, but it turned out to be the normal larva (they're supposed to look like this!) of a species of sawfly, the Butternut Woollyworm (Eriocampa juglandis):

On September 11, I watched a flock of Cedar Waxwings feasting on Pokeweed berries:

These birds looked so fancy surrounded by Pokeweed and blooming goldenrod:

Nearby, an industrious Eastern Chipmunk watched me from one of the many holes in the old apple tree next to our driveway:

Look at those stuffed-full cheeks!

Also on September 11, this European Mantis (Mantis religiosa) was doing its best impression of a grass stem as it staked out a patch of Little Bluestem in the meadow:

This Giant Puffball made an impressive sight in our yard on September 18:

Here's a beautiful Monarch on New England Aster on September 25:

And reddening Virginia Creeper leaves glowing in the sunlit woods:

Furrow Orbweaver spiders (Larinioides cornutus or patagiatus) commonly build webs across the outside of our windows throughout the spring, summer, and fall. This little individual found shelter in a leaf caught against a window in October, and it seems to now be spending the winter curled up in its home; this picture is from October 10:

I didn't get outside much in October and November -- fall is always a busy time. I have a few more sights to share from December 2021, and that will be the next post.

Mid-summer Sights

July and early August this year have been suitably summery, with warm days and temperate nights, some rain but not too much, plentiful vegetables from the garden (we've been eating really well), and lots of interesting summer-time animal sightings around our property. Here are some assorted highlights from the past several weeks!

The trail camera in the woods has continued to gather some fantastic glimpses of our local wildlife, including more videos of Bobcats and Ruffed Grouse -- I'm still astonished and thrilled that these animals have been such regular visitors in our woods this year. The following video compiles a few clips from the trail camera: (1) A bobcat walking on the trail during the day (our first daytime sighting!) on July 14. (I love this big cat's beautiful colors, and those white patches on the backs of its ears; and after a Blue Jay calls and the Bobcat turns back around toward the camera, I think it even opens it mouth and makes a tiny sound!) (2) Our resident Ruffed Grouse family of an adult and two growing chicks on July 11, settled down for a grooming session on the sun-soaked path. (It's too bad this video got a little over-exposed... but I still think it's really cool.) (3) A group of Wild Turkeys -- at least two adults and several partially-downy young -- foraging along the path on July 16. (4) A family of Northern Flickers foraging on the ground and making soft noises on July 30:



Speaking of Northern Flickers, on August 3, I found one of these birds' beautiful feathers on the woods trail. "Yellow-shafted" indeed:
 

Our Eastern Phoebes successfully raised their second brood in their traditional (at least four years running now) spot above our front door. Here's one of the little phoebe faces appearing over the edge of the nest on July 12 (at 10 days old):
 

The phoebe parents did a great job of keeping these babies fed, even throughout a particularly trying few hours one day when a group of people were doing some excavation work in our yard. The phoebes made it clear that they weren't happy about people in sight of their nest, but they were very bold, and they persevered. Here's one of the parents making a food delivery on July 13:
 

These phoebe babies proved to be tenacious, too: A few days before they were ready to fledge, the nest suffered a major structural collapse (I don't know how this happened), yet the three babies stayed put in their partial-nest for the remainder of their nestling time. These are such good birds! Here they are on July 18:
 

Amazingly, we had a third Eastern Phoebe brood this year as well. I wasn't looking out for any more phoebe breeding attempts, so I was shocked to notice on July 20 that a fresh crop of fuzzy babies were jostling around in the same first nest the phoebes built this year (in the small shed on our property). These babies looked like they were about a week younger than the second brood (porch) babies, so the two nests must have been incubated at the same time, which I think must mean that we had two female phoebes nesting on our property at once. The Audubon Field Guide suggested a single male Eastern Phoebe might sometimes hold a territory with two mates, so perhaps that's what happened this year. What drama! Unfortunately, I think the third brood failed, because I wasn't able to see the baby birds again before they would have been old enough to fledge. :( Well, two broods of phoebes -- and eight new birds total -- is still pretty great!

In other nesting news, an American Robin built her nest in a tidy nook on the front of our house, making her next-door neighbors with the phoebes. This nest also failed, but it was nice to have a robin family nearby while it lasted. Goodness, nesting is rough! Here's the mama robin on her nest on July 18:
 

More happily, a pair of Gray Catbirds successfully raised a nest full of babies to fledging in the thicket of forsythia that monopolizes a corner of our property, and Cedar Waxwings have an active nest in the maple tree above the small shed. The House Wrens also have a second brood in the same nest box they used earlier this year. This place does a good job of producing baby birds!

This male Common Yellowthroat was keeping a close eye on me on July 20 while his young family foraged nearby:

Eastern Garter Snakes have been hanging around our yard quite a bit this summer, including this beautiful reddish individual who was lounging on a flat rock next to the house on July 13:
 

This has been a great summer for Red Efts (juvenile Red-spotted Newts)! Several times in the past couple of weeks, I've seen one or more of these awesome amphibians hunting in the flower bed right next to our front porch, where rain plus compost seems to attract a nicely eft-appropriate buffet of insects. I'd never seen efts actively hunting and eating before -- I usually come across them just walking from one place to another -- and I tried to capture this activity on video but ended up with footage too shaky to share. Oh well! Here are some still pictures of two efts in our flower bed on July 23 instead:
 

On the night of July 27, I noticed a small frog on the railing of our back deck. Expecting a Spring Peeper, I went to visit the little creature up close... and it wasn't a peeper, but rather a very young Gray Treefrog! Ahhh, so wonderful!! The two adult Gray Treefrogs who showed up on our porch this past May were the first of this species I'd ever seen, and it's so cool to get to see how small these creatures start out. I love this little frog's green patches and its round clinging toes:
 

Here's a Common Wood-Nymph butterfly feeding on blossoms of (I believe) Wild Basil (Satureja vulgaris) on July 20 in the meadow:
 

And a Hummingbird Clearwing moth visiting Wild Bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) on August 3 -- these awesome moths have been particularly common this year, which makes me very happy:
 

On the night of July 14, I decided to see what would happen if I set up my camera in the meadow with a really long (30-second) exposure time amid the fantastic firefly shows we were getting during that part of the summer. I didn't try to do any fancy processing with these photos, but I think these haphazard results look pretty cool. I love how the fireflies and stars overlap in this picture:
 

And I really like seeing the dotted trails individual fireflies make as they fly and flash across the camera's view:
 

Finally, these strange tracks appeared in looping trails all across our pollen-covered lawn mower in mid-July. Comparing with other pictures online, the best I've been able to figure out is that these are probably marks left by a snail or slug as it fed. So weird!
 

Summer is certainly an interesting time!

Spring and Early Summer Highlights: Part III

OK, here's one more post catching up with April, May, and June around our house!

Yet More Birds

The trail camera in the woods made several videos featuring cool birds this spring. The following video compiles a few especially exciting clips: First, some deer triggered the camera while a Barred Owl happened to be calling nearby -- I've heard a pair of Barred Owls calling individually and together a whole lot this year, and I suspect they've been nesting somewhere in the woods surrounding our property. Next is a video of a Wild Turkey foraging in the underbrush; it's always neat to see these big birds up close. Then, there's another deer-triggered video that captured a Wood Thrush's amazing song; I hear Wood Thrushes only occasionally around here, and getting to hear this song so clearly is such a treat. And finally, incredibly, there's a video of an adult Ruffed Grouse and two tiny chicks foraging at midday. I'd glimpsed Ruffed Grouse in our woods only a couple of times before, and then this family group wandered past the trail camera on three different days. I love Ruffed Grouse a whole lot, and I'm so happy to know that we have them as neighbors.



Amphibians and Others

I've known for a few years now that Gray Treefrogs live around here, and I suspect that they're fairly common, because I hear them trilling every year in May, June, and July. I'd never actually seen one of these mostly arboreal and well-camouflaged amphibians, however, until this year.... On the night of May 22, with warm temperatures and heavy rain -- wonder of wonders -- two Gray Treefrogs appeared right our front porch. Oh my goodness!
 

Paul was admiring these frogs with me, and he pointed out that their skin is all bumpy and mottled, a lot like a toad. But their shape is so treefrog-y, all low to the ground and spread out, and with those big round suction-cup toes.

These two treefrogs were very active -- we'd turn off the light and go inside, and then we'd look out onto the porch again a few minutes later and they'd be in entirely different spots. One of the treefrogs perched on top of our door frame, like the world's most adorable gargoyle:
 

The other treefrog ended up clinging to a window, which meant we got to see a treefrog belly. :)
 

The Gray Treefrogs were the stars of the show, but tons of other amphibians also kept showing up near our porch on that warm rainy night. This little Spring Peeper was adorable and bold:

And here's a Red Eft (juvenile Red-spotted Newt) with an American Toad hulking behind:

Amphibians are awesome!

I'll close this summary with a couple more sights. There have been many interesting insects around, but here's one that's entirely new to me: A male Glowworm Beetle (possibly Phengodes plumosa) who showed up in my garden on June 5. Apparently female Glowworm Beetles look like larvae, and both the females and the larvae are luminescent -- amazing. I'm really impressed by the antennae on this male. What a weird bug:

And finally, the Wild Lupine we planted in our meadow a few years ago put on a fantastic show in June. I love looking at these thick stands of purple and blue flowers:
 

Whew! OK, we're all caught up! Now onward to the rest of summer. :)