There exists a group of moths called "underwings." These creatures have typical moth-y gray/brown-patterned forewings, but then when they fly or stretch, they reveal starkly contrasting hindwings, usually with super bright colors. The effect is almost more butterfly than moth, and totally unexpected!
I'd never seen an underwing moth before the following creature showed up at our porch light a few nights ago -- it's an underwing called (I believe) The Penitent (Catocala piatrix) (really, the names people come up with for moth species are just incredible sometimes):
Is that a cool moth, or what?? Some other species of underwings have bright pink on their hindwings, which is maybe even more shocking, but I like the way orange looks on this creature. Very pretty!
After a whole summer of visiting the beach once a week, I've gotten quite attached to the shore environment. So this morning, I decided it was time to go to the beach again, but this time I went someplace completely new: Long Beach in the town of Stratford. This turned out to be quite a cool place, basically a 1.5-mile bit of land jutting out into the Long Island Sound, with beach on one side and marsh on the other. It was an overcast day, and the place was pretty quiet -- there were no people out walking besides me, and only a couple other birders hanging out at the entrance. I saw hardly any shorebirds (I was expecting to see lots), but there were plenty of other fun things to see instead.
I watched a group of American Kestrels hunting over the marsh -- I just love these dinky little raptors:
One of the kestrels caught a dragonfly -- it was a big dragonfly, but the comparison still shows how small these birds are:
Yum, dragonfly! (And could the color on this bird's tail be any prettier?)
Some bigger raptors were around, too. A Northern Harrier cruised by me a couple of times, close enough that I got a good look at its lovely streaming tail:
When I saw the harrier again later (or possibly a different individual), it flew even closer, and I got to see its white-rimmed face, so strange for a hawk:
A few warblers were passing through, resting in the low bushes growing out of the sand, including this bright Common Yellowthroat:
And Double-crested Cormorants dried their wings on nearby rocks:
Some of the plants on this beach were really cool, too. I was totally impressed by the Rugosa Roses with their bright pink flowers and big fat rose hips -- this is a non-native species, but they made a pretty sight nonetheless:
Also amazingly impressive was the large number (and size) of Prickly Pears, a species which is listed as "special concern" in Connecticut, and which I've never actually encountered in the wild before:
As I was leaving the beach, I got completely distracted by fiddler crabs. They were feeding in a stretch of mud near the path, and when I sat down on a rock to watch, they just wandered closer and closer to me, like I wasn't even there. (Until I stood up, that is, at which point they all immediately streamed back into the safety of the marsh grass.) Crabs are just the funniest little creatures, whether they're females with two small front claws:
Or males with their single hulking appendages:
One of the male crabs I saw must have been a different species from most of the others, because his big claw was particularly huge and yellow, and he held it up shield-like the entire time, effectively blocking his body from view:
So it was a great visit overall, and Long Beach was a fun new place to explore. And just so you can benefit from all the time I spent watching the crabs, here are a couple videos I took of these hilarious creatures in action. (I can't help feeling a little sorry for the males, actually -- the females get to transfer food to their mouths with two arms, while the males have to use only one.) Enjoy!
And the parade of small birds outside my window continues. This afternoon, the star of the show was a bird I'd never seen in our yard before: an American Redstart!
And here I thought the chickadees and titmouses were hard to photograph... this little redstart (a type of warbler) just did not want to sit still! It was fluttering all over the place, snatching food from the branches of the Red Cedar and moving almost as soon as my camera focused on it. (To be fair, though, the redstart was traveling with a Chestnut-sided Warbler and a Red-eyed Vireo, and those other two birds stayed pretty much entirely hidden in the foliage. So I guess the redstart was fairly obliging, by comparison.)
Male American Redstarts in the spring are dressed in stark black and orange, but even this more subdued individual (a female?) was amazingly brilliant, flashing patches of bright yellow here and there through the leaves:
I guess the hunting was good in these trees, because this little bird scoured the branches for quite a while, giving me plenty of views from different angles:
You're so pretty, little bird!
OK, last picture:
I love seeing new visitors in our yard during migration. Keep on coming through, guys!
Several times over the past couple of weeks, I've noticed something really weird outside our windows at night. I'll look over, and a male Greater Angle-wing Katydid (Microcentrum rhombifolium) will be sitting on the window, slowly chewing on the screen:
Or, I should say, he's not actually chewing on the screen itself, but rather he seems to be methodically going over the screen's surface, picking up whatever bits of food are on there. As far as I have been able to find out, katydids are primarily plant eaters, so I have no idea what this creature is finding to eat on the screen. Whatever it is, though, it must be really delicious. (I also once noticed a katydid doing the same thing to the windowsill, so maybe there's something interesting all over the outside of our windows, and the screen's just the easiest surface to cling to.)
In addition to being totally perplexing, this behavior has also has given us a fantastic opportunity to watch a katydid's mouth at work, from right up next to the katydid's face. And I've learned an important fact: Katydid mouths are weird! There are so many mouth parts! Also, these creatures are just really cool to watch.
So if you want to see a katydid's mouth in action, here's a video I took of this creature on Friday night. (Thanks to Paul for letting me use his camera.) We've named the katydid "Karl," although of course I have no proof that it's the same insect visiting our screens on multiple nights.
Interestingly enough, in doing a quick search for "katydid on screen," I found another YouTube video of the same behavior. So our katydids aren't the only ones doing this. I'd love to eventually find out why this is going on, but for now I'll just stick with the "hey, cool" reaction. Insects are so crazy!
It reached 90 degrees yesterday afternoon, which is not all that hot, really, especially considering the sorts of temperatures we were getting last summer. But it was apparently way too hot for our local Black-capped Chickadees, who showed up in the Red Cedar tree outside our apartment's window yesterday, panting.
And of course, I couldn't help taking pictures of these adorable birds trying to keep cool. (Consider this a companion post to the Tufted Titmouse photo shoot from the other day.)
It's so hot!
Well, you do what you can, right? (Right!)
Poor fellows. But at least they seem to have picked up a meal on their way through the tree, and it's always fun to watch punk chickadee antics. :)
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