Widow Skimmers at Fort Snelling

The dragonfly that I photographed the most at Fort Snelling Back in late July was the widow skimmer.
The male widow skimmer above is probably a little older then the one below. As the males age whitish pruinose covers the abdomen, since the one above has more white on the abdomen it stands to reason that it is older.
The females are yellow in color and do not get the outer white bands on their wings. Their abdomen also does not change white with pruinose.
Widow skimmers got their name because the female typically lays the eggs on her own. With most other types of dragons the male will guard the female while she lays the eggs so that no other male will mate with her until after she has laid the eggs which he has fertilized.
With widow skimmers an order of dominance is established by the males with in a population. Females will try and choose a male that is as high in the order as possible for mating.

Fort Snelling Dragonflies

This summer I had a lot of opportunity to go out and photograph nature. As a result I have been able to post every single day for over four months, the last day that I did not make a post was June 4th. Before I began my blog I used to read other blogs, some about nature and others about different subjects such as politics, and one thing that kept bringing me back to certain sites was the fact that they updated every day, or at least on a very regular basis. As I began blogging, and figuring out what I was doing, I made a goal to try and get to the point where I could post every day so that my readers would always have something new to read and look at each day. I have succeeded over most of the summer and I hope to continue through the fall and even through winter. Winter is a hard time to get nature pics in Minnesota but there will be some opportunities and I have put away some photos that I did not post, so that I will have some fun stuff to share during the winter also.
I still also have quite a back log of posts that will probably last me through most of the rest of 2008. Like these dragonfly pics that I took back in July at Fort Snelling State Park.
The blue dasher hunts by making short flights, from a favorite perch, in serch of prey. Both the male, pictured above and the female, which is black and yellow striped, will defend a favorite perch from invading dragons.
I was pretty excited to get a photo of the photo of the dragon above. I have photographed several male eastern pondhawks before but this was the first female that I ever captured. The males are primarily green also but most of their thorax and abdomen is covered in in a slate blue pruinose.
There were also some more Halloween pennants around. Unlike the ones that I found at Purgatory Creek these where the orange color which most likely mean males.
When I saw this pennant through my lens finder the first thought that came to my mind was that it was laying eggs. That idea quickly dissappeared though because it was up in the air, it is probably a male, and eggs are laid from the end of the abdomen. The tiny dots that you can see in the photo are actually water mites. Water mite larva often attach to dragon fly larva and feed on its bodily fluid. The Mites, realatives of the wood tick, continue feeding on the dragonfly as it transforms into an adult. Eventually the water mite larva will drop off of the dragonfly and molt into its nymph form. As long as there are not too many mites the dragonfly can live as a host to these tiny parasites.

Indigo Bunting

One bird that is sometimes mistaken for a mountain bluebird is the indigo bunting. Although similar is size and color the indigo bunting does not have the lighter colored breast of the mountain bluebird. The indigo bunting also has a thinker beak which is light in color compared with the thin black beak of the mountain bluebird.
While I was birding at Fort Snelling State Park on the 7th of June I heard a bird singing somewhere down the trail. The song of the indigo bunting varies by location, and I am not very good at identifying birds by their song, so I was not really sure what type of bird that it was.
So I followed the sound down the trail and found this indigo bunting perched in the open singing. He let me get a few pics before he disappeared into the foliage.
An interesting fact that I found out when I was reading up on indigo buntings is that during migration they typically travel at night, using the stars as a guide. I am guessing that they do this because their blue coloration is a lot more noticeable in the day time then it is at night. It does make it harder to get pictures though when they are traveling at night.

Fort Snelling feeders - hummer

Thursday the rain came again so I did not get to do any birding. This weekend things are supposed to change though and it is supposed to be nice and sunny. It is a good thing because I am running out of pictures that I took last Friday at the feeders at the Fort Snelling Visitors Center. Today's feature is the ruby-throated hummingbird.

Fort Snelling feeders - nuthatch

Today's featured bird, from my photo session at the Fort Snelling Visitors Center from last Friday, is the white-breasted nuthatch.

Fort Snelling feeders

On my foray to Fort Snelling last Friday, before the miserable weather began, I stopped to take some shots at the visitors center. The center was closed by the time that I arrived but they have a patio area, which is surrounded by a nice little bird garden, with a bird feeding station. There were quite a few small birds around at the feeders and at the bird bath, and since the light was fading fast I took some pictures. Today's we feature one of the feeder birds the black-capped chickadee.
Hopefully the rain and clouds will clear up soon so that I can get back to birding.

Dragons before the rain

Will the rain and clouds ever stop. OK, so I am being a bit over dramatic. It has only been 3 days but I really need to get out and see the sun again and take some pictures. Maybe some dragons will cheer me up. I took these on Friday evening at Fort Snelling State Park before the 40 days and 40 nights of rain began.

Widow Skimmer

White-faced meadowhawk

This last one is not really a dragon but what good are dragons without a damsel.

Blue-fronted dancer female blue form damselfly

You can tell that is the the female because the male will be blue at the end of its abdomen. Damselflies differ from dragonflies in that damselfly rest with their wings against their bodies instead of spread out like dragonflies. The eyes on the damselfly are also separated, unlike dragonflies, and both sets of wings are the same size. On dragonflies the back wings are broader at the base then the front wings. This is very evident on the widow-skimmer pictured earlier in the post.

Dragons in love

While exploring the fields around the Minnesota River in Fort Snelling Stat Park I came across quite a few meadowhawk dragonfly.Most of the meadowhawk that I saw where I believe ruby meadowhawk but there are several variety which appear to look very similar so I could be mistaken. Many of the meadowhawk where perched with their wings out and their abdomen up in the air. They do this when it is warm to minimize the amount of their body that is getting heat from the sun.

While the male meadowhawks where up at the top of the grass showing off the females where harder to find and tended to stay lower in the grass. Their yellow color also made them easier to blend into the grass then the bright red of the males. This is very similar to many bird species, such as red-winged blackbirds and cardinals, just to name a few. This is prolly natures way of protecting the female who produces the young.Dragonfly mating is very unique. Before mating can begin the male has to prepare. Male dragonfly have 2 sexual organs. Before mating the male transfers sperm from the main sexual organ at the end of the abdomen, where it is produced, to the secondary sexual organ at the base of the abdomen. The male then places the end of his abdomen on top of the females head. She grasps his abdomen with her tarsus, the end of the dragonfly foot.The female then places her sexual organ, which is located at the end of her abdomen over top of the male's secondary sexual organ to receive the sperm. The pair stay together in this tandem position and will even fly this way while mating. Once fertilized the female will lay the eggs in water or deposit them inside water foliage, depending on the type of dragonfly.I also found a white-faced meadow hawk on my trip. I did not realize that I had photographed a second type, since the males look very similar except for the white frons on the white-faced meadowhawk.

For more pictures and information on dragonfly and their mating check out this website http://www.cirrusimage.com/dragonflies.htm .

Going buggy at Fort Snelling

While birding at Fort Snelling State Park I have noticed an abundance of insect life. Some of it I really do not care for, mosquitoes, ticks, deer flies, but some of it makes pretty good subject for nature photography. So I decided to expand the eco part of the blog to include some insect pictures. I don't know a lot about insects, I am certainly not an expert on birds either, but maybe I can use the blog to increase my knowledge.

I did find some decent field guides on butterflies and moths so I was able to ID the butterfly that I was able to photograph. This first one is a cabbage white. Cabbage white butterflies are not a native species, they come from Europe, but they are now very commonly seen. The one below is a female. You can tell by the two black dots in the middle of the wings. Males only have one spot so it is easy to identify between the sexes.

The next butterfly is also pretty common it is a red admiral. Red admiral butterfly are found throughout most f the world. They can not survive extreme winter which means that here in Minnesota the population is recolonized each spring by butterflies migrating north. On a trip to Carlos Avery Wildlife Management area a short while ago I saw hundreds of these red admiral sunning themselves on the road. It was like a cloud of butterflies lifting up from the road in front of me as I drove.
Most people in the US will recognize this butterfly. It is, of coarse, the monarch butterfly.
Monarchs are avoided by most predators because they are poisonous. Predators that eat a monarch get very sick, although they usually do not die, and in the future remember that this type of butterfly is not very tasty. The monarchs get there poison from eating the poisonous milkweed plant as a caterpillar.
Unfortunately I have not found a guide book that I like for dragonflies. So for the time being I will just post the pictures with out an identification. If someone reading this blog can and wants to ID them please post in the comment section below.

Thanks to Scott I think that I can now ID all of the dragonflies in the post.

male whitetail

halloween pennant

female widow skimmer

male widow skimmer

western meadowhawk

male blue dasher

It is kind of interesting that dragonfly are similar to birds in that male and female of some types are often very different looking.

I also found this cool bee which I am not able to ID because I do not have a bee guide either.

I also was able to identify this bee as a baldfaced hornet.
If anyone knows of a good guide book for dragonflies and other insects please post the information in the comment section below.

Thanks again Scott for your help.

Fort Snelling State Park

On June 29th I read on the Minnesota Ornithologists' Union list server that a prothonotary warbler had been spotted at Fort Snelling State Park. Since it is only a short 20 minute drive I decided to run over and see if I could get a picture. That day I did not see the prothonotary but I did get a good look at a peregrine falcon that appears to be living under the Mendota Bridge which passes directly over a large part of the park. Since the 29th I have made several trips back to Fort Snelling. I did get a glimpse of the prothonotary once as it crossed the path that I was on but was never able to get a picture. I did find some good subjects while I was in the park though. Like the eastern phoebe pictured below. I found him at the edge of a small field that opened up out of the woods.

There were also some downy woodpeckers checking out the small trees that lined the field.

On most my trips to the park I got some shots of indigo bunting.

They liked to sing in a dead tree on the side of the trail.
The indigo bunting were more blue then this juvenile eastern bluebird that I found.The Minnesota River travels from the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge through the park and then connects to the Mississippi. The flood plain of the Minnesota River provides plenty of shallow water for long legged waders, like great egret and great blue heron, to hunt.
The egrets and heron are not the only hunters in the park. Several times I have spotted the peregrine again on my visits.

Unfortunately I have not been as close as the first time that I spotted it, usually I see it perched on the high support beams of the bridge.

But one morning I was lucky and it decided to take off from a beam that was fairly close and so I got some decent flight shots.

There are other things to photograph in the park other then birds. There are a lot of white tailed dear in Minnesota, even in the Twin City metro area, so photographing them is kind of like taking pictures of cowbirds or robins.

However the fawns are still cute and fun to watch and they are plentiful at this time.

I found a pair of muskrat working on building there home.

They kept going to a small island, in the pond that their home was located, digging up weeds and then dragging them through the water back to their home on the opposite bank.

I also took a lot of pictures of butterfly and dragonfly but I will save them for my next post.