Category: In the Field

Wrapping up reporting for the 2024 nesting season.

OK, for a rainy-day project, I can total up results for our nesting season. It was a much better year for our Wood Ducks. It’s likely that some of our Hooded Mergansers managed with natural cavities.

For our Wood Ducks, 10 nests started, 1 nest lost to predation, 9 nests fledged; 146 eggs laid, 117 ducklings fledged. For our Hooded Mergansers, 2 nests started, 2 nests fledged; 22 eggs laid, 19 ducklings fledged. About the same fledging rate (80% for WODU, 86% for HOME)….

Once again, thank you, monitors!

The action was a little slow: we suspect that butterfly numbers are down due to the drought. But I did secure good images of Little Glassywing (Vernia verna) and Common Checkered-Skipper (Burnsius communis), the latter a new butterfly for me.

Quite hot and muggy.

We started early and only surveyed for about 4 hours, skipping Silver Lake this time. Much of the Pickerelweed at our “secret” pond at the Farm Brewery had been cut back, so the damsels just weren’t there. Our newbies got good looks at some of the common species, so that’s a win. I recorded observations of Calico Pennant (Celithemis elisa) and Banded Pennant (C. fasicata), as well as a couple of butterflies and plants. I’m gradually, unintentionally, building up an interesting plant list for Leopold’s Preserve. Maybe I should be more intentional about that.

And one more trip report and I’m caught up until the weekend.

Clifton Institute is holding two bioblitzes on sponsor properties this summer. For the site visit on 15 June, we’re building on an established iNaturalist project. I was briefly on the leaderboard.

In the meadow leading up to the house, I found a Coral Hairstreak (Satyrium titus). Tiniest critter spotted turned out to be a White-margined Burrower Bug (Sehirus cinctus). On an adjoining property (friendly neighbors), a gneiss outcrop hosts a dryland specialty, Round-leaved Fameflower (Phemeranthus teretifolius), very cool.

After dark at the lights we had several species of sphinx moth. I am still getting the hang of photographing under the UV conditions, but I did snap a pic of a handsome Virginia Creeper Sphinx (Darapsa myron). And the iNat community taught me that a Large Maple Spanworm Moth (Prochoerodes lineola) is not the same as a Juniper Geometer Moth (Patalene olyzonaria), seen on last year’s bioblitz.

Most of the birds remained out of sight, but I got some reasonable audio recordings.

The Borrowers were following me around in the field on this trip. The wrist strap on my point-and-shoot came undone and disappeared, and the glass element worked itself out of my loupe for the last time and dropped to the forest floor. I think I even heard it drop and I looked back, but clear glass is kinda invisible.

And finally, a short stop at Finzel Swamp Preserve in Garrett County, Maryland. Maybe I was visiting at the wrong time of year, but I was not impressed. As a Nature Conservancy preserve, trail maps of this place are hard to come by and the trail is not blazed at all. I walked about a half mile in—maybe I covered the ground I should have? At the pond, the rough trail forks, with the path to the left wrapping around the pond and that to the left into a big muddy spot.

Oh, I just found a map. Yes, I covered everything. There are some audio notes as well; if I return, I’ll use them to locate the protected larches on the property.

I did turn up a mystery spreadwing. Maybe a teneral?

So many field trips, such a backlog of trip reports I have! I’ll start with the first annual Rappahannock County dragonfly/damselfly count on 8 June, organized by Bert Harris and the Clifton Institute. Big thanks to Nik and the team at The Farm at Sunnyside for hosting one of our stops. My best photo is a Unicorn Clubtail (Arigomphus villosipes) obelisking.

This was also the trip in which I learned that wading streams with lots of small boulders covered in algae is not my forte. I took a tumble into the Rush River and gave a spiffy new camera a slight dunking. I let it dry, and here’s hoping that it will bounce back.

We’re almost done with nest boxes for the year, but not quite.

We checked 4 boxes with open activity. Box #61 hatched, 7 out of 10 eggs fledged. Box #6 does indeed have a second clutch, which we expect to hatch in early July. Box #5, the snake-predated box, showed no egg or shell remnants, which is what we expected.

I will check box #6 solo in early July: it’s a quick hop off the boardwalk….

Thanks for a good season! I’ll send summary reports once we have all the data.

Ken Rosenthal of Reston’s Walker Nature Center led a birding walk on the Limberlost Trail loop in Shenandoah National Park. Most of the birds remained high-high in the canopy, so most of our observations were heard not seen. We did hear Blue-headed Vireo (Vireo solitarius) often, and got got some fleeting looks from below. American Redstarts (Setophaga ruticilla) were also common.

On the botany front, we found a few mountain-Piedmont specialties: American False-hellebore (Veratrum viride), Fly-poison (Amianthium muscitoxicum), and (probably-maybe) Dolls’-eyes (Actaea pachypoda). Ken also pointed out a Panorpa scorpionfly and a Half-wing Moth (Phigalia titea) caterpillar. We’re pretty sure that we turned up an Appalachian Azure (Celastrina neglectamajor).

This trip counts for Master Naturalist continuing ed hours, so there’s that bonus.

My report from Sunday:

Well, things got a little weird. We had four successful clutches hatch (three Wood Duck, one Hooded Merganser), plus we cleaned out box #2 from the hatching on 18 April.

We have what may turn out to be a second WODU clutch in box #6. We found one Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica) egg in box #60; we didn’t dig around much to see what became of the WODU nest in that box. And box #5 turned into the gentle reminder to look inside the box before putting your mitts inside: I found a Ratsnake (iNat consensus is that it’s in the Eastern/Gray complex). As in the case of box #60, I was not able to determine the disposition of the WODU nest.

So, we have four boxes that I want to check on 2 June: boxes #6, #1, #5, and #61 (#61 is due to hatch by then). We don’t need a full crew, but any that can join are welcome…. Please let me know whether you can do a quick day on the 2nd.

Then, depending on what we find, I think that we will have two or three boxes to check in July. Details forthcoming….

Merci beaucoup!