The weather has been pretty poor lately. The rain and clouds came into town on Sunday the 7
th and remained for most of the next week. On Thursday October 11
th the rain had stopped but the skies were still pretty overcast. I had planned to drive up to Duluth that afternoon after work and spend that evening and most of Friday, I had taken Friday off of work, birding the North Shore and Hawk Ridge. However since the weather was so poor I decided to change my plans. I decided to stay home, go to work on Friday, and try to make a trip up north later on, when I would have better weather for photographing birds.
It had been several days since I had been birding so I decided that I would go out despite the overcast skies. I decided to go visit Afton State Park, I had not been there since I participated in a St Paul Audubon field trip in the early summer. By the time I got off of work there were a few peaks of sun so I was hopeful that I might get some productive shots.
As I entered the park I spotted a red-tailed hawk flying overhead. Unfortunately there are no parking spots at that part of the road and since there was other traffic I was not able to pull over and get any shots of the hawk. So I continued on to the parking area and headed down the hiking trail towards the river. Along the trail I spotted quite a few sparrows, warblers, robins, chickadees, and other small birds, however between the clouds and the trees there was not enough light to get any descent shots. When I got down to a picnic area that was a little more open, down near the river, I noticed a few birds fluttering around in the small trees. I decided to play the waiting game and found a good place where I could observe the birds and wait for them to get more comfortable with my presence so that they would come out into the open and I could take some pics. A little patience paid off and I got a few shots of both ruby-crowned and golden-crowned kinglets.
Unfortunately the ruby-crowned
kinglets were not showing me their crowns.
You can tell by most of the pictures that the weather was pretty gray out.
I did get a nice peak of sun every now and again and I was quick to take advantage.
Because the light did not last very long.
Down on the beach I spotted a few ring-billed gulls flying over the river. One dove in after a fish while this one decided to take a rest on one of the swimming buoys.
After too short a time the sky got darker so I decided it was time to take off. On my way out I spotted a group of wild turkeys foraging on the side of the road. Since there were not any cars on the road at that time I pulled over and took some pictures.
A little further down the road I spotted the red-tailed hawk that I had seen when I arrived. He was sitting in a tree not far from the road with a beautiful gray sky as a background (sarcasm alert). I stopped again anyway and took a few shots and then headed off to home and dinner.
Back on September sixth there were quite a few butterflies around when I visited Afton State Park. Afton is located on the St Croix River a little ways north of where the St Croix joins with the Mississippi.
The reason that I went to Afton was to try and find some of the rare clubtail dragonflies that are only found around the St Croix River in Minnesota. but while searching for dragons I came across quite a few butterflies. Although the cabbage white is a common through out most of North America it is not actually a native to the continent. It was accidentally introduced from Europe into Canada in the 1860s. You can tell that this is a male cabbage white because it only has a single spot on the fore wing, females have two spots.
I also found a fairly good numbers of eastern tailed-blue butterflies. These are similar in size to the endangered Karner blue but they are much more common and are easily identified by the small tendril or tail projecting from the hind wing. The only other blue in our area with a tail is the western tailed-blue. You can tell the difference because the eastern has two or more orange spots near the tail where the western has only a single orange spot. We see a lot more eastern tailed-blue.
At first glance I thought this next butterfly was a monarch but when I was able to examine it more closely I realised that it was a monarch copycat.
The viceroy resembles the monarch, which is toxic to most predators because of the milkweed it eats when it is a caterpillar, this helps it to avoid predators. Viceroys are noticeably smaller then monarchs and have a stripe running across the hind wing that the monarch does not have.
I did find one dragon that appears to be a clubtail. Unfortunately I was only able to get off a couple of quick shots before it flew off across the water where I could not follow. It was not a very great picture but I think that it may be a russet-tipped clubtail, possibly one that only recently emerged. There is only one record of Russet-tipped clubtails in Minnesota and that was in Houston County on the far south east tip of the state, according Odonata Central. Hopefully this information is up to date and correct, if not I am sure that Hap will let me know. I have also found other dragons that I believe were russet-tipped clubtails down at Carpenter Nature Center, which is also on the St Croix River a little south of Afton. I plan to make a photo set and send it to the Minnesota Odonata Survey Project. If I am correct with my identification,hopefully they will be able to tell from the photos, then perhaps the russet-tipped clubtail will get added to the species checklist for Washington County.
