March 2022 – Brennah's Backyard

First Butterflies of Spring

There are a couple of fairly common woodland butterflies that I usually start to see right around this time of year: the comma butterfly and the mourning cloak butterfly. It should be a bit of a toss-up which I see first since they start to appear at roughly the same time. In practice, it seems like I usually spot the mourning cloak first. This year was no exception to that; I spotted my first mourning cloak on the 21st (I didn’t have my camera with me at the time, though), and I haven’t spotted a comma yet.

The two species are relatively closely related and have a similar strategy that allows them to be present super early in the spring; both overwinter as adults and can feed on tree sap so they aren’t dependent on flowers blooming to be active.

Mourning cloak butterfly — This mourning cloak butterfly was basking in a patch of sunshine in the woods which might be part of why I was able to creep up on it. Their distinctive colors and markings make them pretty unmistakable.

Comma butterfly on willow catkins — This comma butterfly is perched on one of its host plants (plants their caterpillars develop on), willow.

Oak Portrait

We have some pretty cool looking trees in the woods here, but it can be kind of tricky to get photos of them that really show off their unique character. Getting just the right angle on these massive oaks is a challenge, especially in the woods where you have limited options because there are so many other trees around. This tree is amazing looking and I’ve taken pictures of it before, but this is the first time I’ve been satisfied with the results.

Oak tree with twisted branches

Reflections in the Creek

Lately I’ve been trying to get some more recent creek reflection photos because they’re always fun to look at, and most of my better ones were from my old camera. Basically I was trying to recreate the effect with higher quality photos… which is not exactly how these turned out, but I think they turned out pretty well anyway.

reflections of trees and clouds in creek

Wildlife Photography Requires Patience…

It occurred to me that in one of my last posts ‘Life in a Dead Tree’, I described the bees I found nesting in the tree, and included the best photo I’d managed to take of one of them, which wasn’t very good. I knew at the time that it wasn’t particularly good, but decided it was better than nothing. That didn’t stop me from trying to get a better one next time their nesting season came around. It took me over a month of attempting whenever the weather seemed good for bees to be active, but I finally managed to get the photos I was after. And some of my ‘failed’ attempts were actually kind of cool in their own right.

nest hole of an augochlora sweat bee with bee antennae poking out — At the time I took this picture, I wasn’t sure whether to be amused or disappointed that only the bee’s antennae were visible… I did not have a proper picture of these bees nesting yet, and the bee seemed to have no intention of coming out the rest of the way. It is kind of cute though, and now I can properly enjoy it knowing I eventually succeeded in photographing these bees.

nest hole of an augochlora sweat bee surrounded by wood dust — This is the nest of the bee I waited for for quite a while (in a not very comfortable position) to come out of her nest. All she ever did was poke her antennae out a bit. I spotted this nest thanks to all the ‘sawdust’ piled around the entrance from recent excavations. All you can really see of the bee in this photo is a tiny glint of green in the hole.

native bee excavating a nest in a log — This is not the species of bee I was after, but it was my first decent photo of a bee emerging from a nest in a log. It isn’t quite as sharp as my next set of pictures, but it does show the bee actively excavating her nest (you can see the chewed up wood in her mandibles) which I think is pretty cool.

Augochlora sweat bee at the entrance to her nest — My first clear shot of an augochlora bee exiting her nest!

Augochlora sweat bee on a mossy log — Another bee scoping out a log. I don’t know if she had a nest here, or if she was looking for a spot to build her nest, but she looked pretty next to the yellow-green moss. Her genus name, augochlora, actually translates to ‘gold-green’.

Great Lobelia in Winter

Earlier this winter I spotted some interesting looking structures on an old dried lobelia plant. They were pretty tiny, so, as I frequently do, I brought out my macro lens to photograph them and get a better look.

part of great lobelia seed capsule — The ‘interesting structures’ on the lobelia

They turned out to be the skeleton of the part of the plant that holds the seed capsules. I realized this when I managed to find one that was still holding on to a capsule.

Great lobelia seed capsule — Great lobelia with seed capsule.

In summer, great lobelia has distinctively shaped blueish-purple flowers. In winter it is very much just one more dried plant stem unless you look very closely!