Frogs or Toads or Both?

I have spent a good deal of time over the past few days over at the Carpenter Nature Center. Friday was a gorgeous day, with plenty of sunshine and temps up into the mid 80's, so after I got off of work I headed over to Carpenter to watch the bird banding. The banding was a bit slow but there were a couple of cool birds that found their way into the nets. There were a couple of sharpies, that they banded before I got there, the first white-throated sparrow of the season and a brown creeper, which they only catch a couple a year. I did get some pics but I will post them later, I still have a back log that goes back into July.

After the banding I stuck around to help get ready for the Raptor Release that was held on Saturday. Pretty much my whole day Saturday was spent at Carpenter also. Between doing education at the hawk/falcon ring in the morning and the owl ring in the afternoon and sneaking away to take pictures off the release in the middle I was pretty busy.
I was so busy that I did not even get to go watch the nature centers program on reptiles and amphibians. Which is too bad because it may have given me some good info for today's post. As the summer went on I began to see more and more toads on my little journeys out into nature, so I decided to get a few pics, while I was out at the Bass Ponds back in July, to share on the blog.
I did a bit of research and I was surprised to find out that while all toads are frogs not all frogs are toads. You see the term frog is the scientific term of all frogs and toads. Toad is just a distinction or type of frog. So what makes a frog a toad? Well the main difference is that toads tend to have rough dry leathery skin typically filled with many bumps that resemble warts. This protective skin allows them to live further away from water then the other members of the frog family who have smooth skin. Toads usually also have shorter legs then other frogs and do not have teeth, other frogs have small fish like teeth.

Butterflies at the Bass Ponds

There were a lot of very colorful dragonflies flying around the Bass Ponds over the summer, which was lucky for me because it seemed as though we had a lot less butterflies around this year. The lack of butterflies may have been a direct effect of the late start to spring that we had this year. Many butterfly species have more then one brood over the summer and it seems like the early broods, many of which are caterpillars that hatched the prior summer and over wintered in their larval form, may have been effected by the late winter weather and so less made it to their adult form.
The eastern comma, pictured above, is one of earliest butterflies that we see each year. This is because they hibernate as adults. They spend the winter in a state of suspended animation in a crevice or hollow tree with their wings folded together and head down. In this position they avoid predators, while they are helpless, by appearing to be a dead leaf.
The red-spotted purple is actually a subspecies of the red-spotted admiral. These butterflies over winter as a Caterpillar in a rolled leaf of one of their host plants, which include willow, aspen, hawthorn, birch, poplar, basswood, juneberry, black cherry and apple trees.
The red-spotted purple resembles the pipevine swallowtail, which is toxic. This mimicry helps the red-spotted purple to avoid predators in the south where their ranges overlap. Up here in the north they are not so lucky and you can see this one has a few pieces missing from its wings.
Skippers are always tough for me to ID, I am still pretty new at butterflies, but I think that this may be a Delaware skipper. If anyone thinks that I am wrong please let me know in the comment section.

The Rest of the Dragons at the Bass Ponds

There were also a few other types of dragonfly that I photographed on my trip to the Bass Ponds back in July.
The twelve spotted skimmer is one of the most common dragons around. It is easily recognized, by the spots on the wings, and usually perches in the open making them easy to photograph. An added bonus is that if they flush when approached they will typically land back on the same perch or one near by.
The common whitetail male is also pretty hard to mistake. The wing pattern along with the white pruinose abdomen make them recognizable from a pretty good distance away. The female common whitetail looks a lot like a female twelve-spotted skimmer.

Another common pond dragon that is a member of the skimmer family is the widow skimmer.
Widow skimmers are identified by the black and the white pruinose bands on their wings. The female widow skimmer only has the black band and does not get pruinose on the wings or abdomen.
One dragon that was not as common as the rest, that I was able to photograph that day, is the eastern amberwing. These small dragons are usually less then an inch long and prefer still or slow moving water.
This was a male eastern amberwing, you can tell because the wings are completely colored. The female amberwing has a wing pattern that is similar to the Halloween pennant, although they are quite a bit smaller.
The final dragon that I photographed was the four-spotted skimmer. This type of dragon can be found all over the globe including North America, Europe, North Africa and Asia.

Fall Begins with Halloween Pennants

Yesterday was the fall equinox. An equinox is a day when the sun is directly over the equator. This phenomena provides us with a day that has equal amounts of light and darkness, 12 hours of each. There are two equinox each year the spring equinox, which is around March 20th, and the fall equinox, which falls around September 22. The fall equinox is the herald of less daylight, the days continue to get shorter until the winter solstice which occurs around December 21st, and it is also the official end of summer.
So now that we are officially in fall I think that it is quite symbolic to post these pics of Halloween pennants that I took back in July at the Bass Ponds.
Halloween pennants have a very large range. They can be found from Southern Canada all the way down to the Florida Everglades. Males are orange, like the ones pictured in this post, while females are often more yellow in color.
Halloween pennants can be seen flying into about the middle of September, although I have not see any around here since the beginning of August, they are often active on colder days and when it rains.

Meadowhawk Dragonflies

I am sorry that the last couple of posts were kind of short. I did them very quickly, on Friday, before I left for a trip up north to Duluth Minnesota for Hawk Weekend at Hawk Ridge. I had planned to try and add some more to the posts in the evening after I was done taking pics unfortunately the hotel that I stayed in did not have wireless Internet and the only PC they had in their "business center" was a Mac.I have nothing against Mac but when 97 % of the US works on PCs and not Macs I think it is kind of a bad business decision to choose a Mac. In fact this is the only hotel that I have ever stayed in where they had a Mac. Well needless to say no one could figure out how to use it, myself included and I work with computers for a living, so no one at the hotel was able to use Internet. Good thing that I did those short posts in advance otherwise I would have broken my consecutive streak.

So for today I have some more dragons from the Bass Ponds that I took in July. These are all meadowhawks. Meadowhawks are smaller, an inch to an inch and a half, dragonflies that are commonly seen mostly in fields later in the summer and into the fall.
There are at least 8 types of meadowhawks in my area. Several of the different types are very difficult to distinguish between unless you have them under a magnifying lens, especially juveniles and females.
Most of the male meadowhawks in my area are red in color. The exceptions to this would be the black meadowhawk, which is all black, and the band-winged, which can sometimes appear brown. The variegated is red but has an unique pattern and the Autumn meadowhawk is the only one with yellow-legs. The other four types are very similar. Females of all the species are usually a yellow orange color. My guess is that these were white-faced meadowhawks, especially the males.

In his book Dragonflies of the North Woods, Kurt Mead, states that sometimes male whiteface dragons will fly in tandem with female cherry-faced or ruby dragonflies but they will rarely actually mate because their reproductive parts are not compatible.

Eastern Pondhawk Dragonfly

Another dragon that was plentiful at the Bass Ponds was the eastern pondhawk. These look similar, at least the males do, to the blue dashers from the last post except that they have 2 white spike at the end of their abdomen instead of the black tip that the dashers have.

Blue Dasher Dragonfly

July is part of the peek season for pond dragonflies. So when I visited the bass Ponds on the third weekend in July there were a lot of dragonflies around for me to photograph. Since I had so many pics I have broken them down and given most types their own post with a pick up post for types that I only took one or two pics at the end.

This first type is the Blue Dasher

Colorful Dragons at the Bass Ponds

There are many people around the world who enjoy birdwatching. They find birds fascinating and usually use words like colorful and beautiful when asked to describe what they enjoy about birds. Many people also enjoy butterflies and use the same words to describe them, but it is rare that you hear dragonflies described in these terms.
The truth is that there are dragons that can rival many butterflies for their color and beauty. I found two different examples of extremely colorful dragons when I visited the Bass Ponds Back in June.
The first three photos are examples of the Halloween pennant. Pennants are a type of dragonfly that tend to hang vertically of off the top of a stick, reed, or weed with their wings angled, so that they resemble a pennant on the top of a stick. The Halloween pennant is named such because of its autumn color scheme and it is the most common pennant in North America.
Unlike many other types of dragons, Halloween pennants do not seem to mind the weather so much. They can often be seen flying on windy days, during cooler temps or even during light rain or drizzle, when other dragons are under cover.
This next dragon looks similar but it is actually a very different type. The eastern amberwing has similar color as the Halloween pennant but it is easy to tell the difference, since the amberwing does not perch like a pennant.
The eastern amberwing is also smaller in size, then the Halloween pennant and usually much more wary. Usually they tend to only perch over water, for safety, but I got lucky to find this one perched on a bloom. I was also lucky that it stayed there while I took a few shots.

Birding Makes a Return at the Bass Ponds

If you are a fairly new visitor to Ecobirder you might be a bit confused. After all with a name like Ecobirder you are probably expecting to see pictures of birds, instead of all of the insects that I have been posting lately. That is why we, Michelle helped to chose the name, called it Ecobirder because the eco part represents all of the non-birding nature pics that I post. However, how about if I post some bird pics that I shot at the Bass Ponds in July so you bird purists out there do not totally walk out on me.
While I was traveling around the ponds, checking the trees for passerines and the tall grass for butterflies and dragons, a double-crested cormorant made a big splash on the scene.
The double-crested cormorant is the most widely seen cormorant in North America. Where most cormorants are only found near the coast the double-crested cormorant are found in large numbers on inland lakes and water ways. The double-crested cormorant was listed as a species of special concern by the Audubon Society back in the 70's but since then there numbers have exploded. This increase in population has caused conflict with fisheries, who claim that the cormorants eat their fish as well as some park management, fecal matter from nests has a tendency to kill trees.
The sudden arrival of the cormorant startled a great egret who was fishing on the pond, either that or the guy with the big camera eye staring at it.
The great egret is a member of the heron family and is found across much of the world. The great egret, like many members of the heron family, was decimated by plume hunters in the late 1800s and early 1900s. They rebounded after federal laws were put in place to protect them. Today the great egret is the symbol of the National Audubon Society.
All of the racket over at the pond, what with that prima donna symbol of the Audubon Society and the paparazzi photographing it, caught the attention of a cedar waxwing that was trying to take a snooze.
The cedar waxwing gets its name from the red, waxy appearing, tips on some of the secondaries. The tips are clearly visible in both photos above. The purpose of the red tips is not known for sure however some believe that they may come into play during mate selection. Cedar waxwings are berry eaters and can get intoxicated from eating fermented berries.

Bass Ponds Blue Dasher

The dragonfly that was the most prevalent at the bass ponds when I visited in July was the blue dasher.
A member of the Libellulidae family the blue dasher is a common dragonfly seen at lakes ponds and slow moving streams through out the US and into Mexico and southern Canada. They prefer lower elevations and as such are not found in the Rocky Mountain Region.
Blue dasher hunt from a favorite perch, making short flights to catch small flying insects and then return to their perch.
Both Male and female of the species will defend good feeding perches.
Immature blue dashers and females have a green face and thorax. Their abdomen is brown with with a pair of yellow dashed lines running across the top which end before segment 10. As the dashers age the abdomen changes powdery blue with pruinose. Although the females do turn blue also they do not get as blue as the males do.

Bass Ponds Dragonflies

On Monday July 14th it was a nice day so I decided to go and visit the Bass Ponds after work. In midsummer there is not usually a lot of birds around the Bass Ponds, but there are sure a lot of pond dwelling dragonflies to photograph.
The twelve-spotted skimmer is named for the black spots on its wings. You can see from both the picture above and the picture below that each of the four wings contains three black spots for a total of twelve all together. The male twelve spotters also have white spots in between the black spots so both of the pictured twelve spots are male.
Twelve-spots are pretty easy to photograph. Since they are fairly common dragonfly through out most of North America, except for the extremes, they are usually pretty easy to find. There size and the fact that they like to perch on the tops of sturdy vegetation also aides in finding this species. The best part though is that if you get to close and flush a twelve-spot chances are he will come back and land in almost the exact same spot. So all that you need to do is sit and wait.
The eastern pondhawk is not quite as easy to photograph as the twelve-spot. They are much less common and prefer to hunt from the ground, as pictured above, or a low perch. Females and immature males are green, but as the males mature they gain a powder blue pruinosity which begins from the end of their abdomen and eventually covers most of their body.
It is a bit more difficult to see the spots on the four spotted skimmer then on the twelve-spotted. The spots are the stigma, small colored patch at the end of every dragonflies wing, which is black and a heavy black nodal spot. The nodal spot is where a cluster of veins join together near the center of the front edge of each wing. All dragons have a nodal spot although on most it is not as visible as it is on the four-spotted. The four-spotted skimmer pictured above is probably pretty mature, you can tell because it has lost most of the color in its wings and its abdomen is fairly dark.
I think that it is strange that they call them four-spotted skimmers. Since they have 2 spots on each wing they actually have a total of eight spots, if you count them the way that twelve-spotted are counted.

Bass Ponds

After birding Black Dog Lake and Old Cedar Avenue Bridge last weekend I moved on to check out the Bass Ponds. Normally I would have kept my truck at the Old Cedar Ave Bridge parking lot and just walked to the bass Ponds from there, both are part of the same unit of the Minnesota valley NWR, but they currently have the path that connects them closed, due to construction. There is a pond that is between the bridge and the bass Ponds that is a holding pond for the city of Bloomington. They decided to enlarge it earlier this year. It was supposed to be completed by March 15th but here it is after April 15th and it is still closed. which is really depressing because that area was always good for finding butterflies and dragonflies and if it is not done soon I think that it will be pretty empty this year.
Down in the trees that line the path that over looks the river overflow I did manage to find an eastern phoebe.
Usually phoebes dart around in the trees and are difficult to photograph but this one was a bit more cooperative and perched in a small tree on the side of one of the open ponds.
In the marshy area, just below the hill that leads to the parking lot, there was a northern shoveler out sifting for food in the shallow waters.
In the small pond that is filled by a run off pipe, a great blue heron was fishing for its breakfast.
Fortunately it would not be going hungry that morning.
I was hoping that I could photograph it getting another fish but then some dog walkers came down the path towards it and it flushed. That morning I also saw some great egrets, mallards, Canadian geese, trumpeter swans, and kinglets and the Bass Ponds.