Monarchs and Meadow Blazing Star

The weather was pretty nice out on this Friday and Saturday so I decided to go out and check some of my favorite haunts to see how Spring and migration is going. Although there is not any snow around anymore everything was still really brown. Fortunately we got some rain today and it appears to be helping to green things up.
One of the places that I stopped at was the Maplewood Nature Center. Besides a great birding location the Maplewood Nature Center also has one of the best butterfly gardens that I have seen in the area. It is still a little early to have a butterfly garden up and running so far this year but I did want to get a picture of their butterfly garden sign, which gives info on the plants that they typically use.

In case it is too small to read the plants featured on the sign are purple prairie clover, butterfly weed, meadow blazing star, and prairie phlox.

The flowers that always seemed to be the most popular at the butterfly garden were the meadow blazing star.
As the sign states the meadow blazing star are monarch magnets and I found more monarchs on these plants in Maplewood, during September, then I found any where else on my travels through out the summer.
The meadow blazing star blooms in August and typically stays in bloom for four to six weeks. This means that it is usually in bloom when our second brood of monarch take wing and stays in bloom while they gather together in preparation to migrate south. They are nectar rich and unlike other blazing stars the meadow blazing star has multiple blooms per stalk.
This is one of the main reasons why the Maplewood Nature Center has been certified as a registered Monarch Waystation.

Birding Maplewood Nature Center

Over the summer I did quite a bit of birding at the Maplewood Nature Center. Near the boardwalk that crosses over the lake there is a small island that always seemed to be teeming with birdlife. On July 31st I stopped in and took the following pics.
I am not 100% sure what type of flycatcher that this is but my guess is that it is an olive-sided flycatcher. It was always pretty easy to find several types of flycatcher perched on the trees, that were growing on the island, waiting for a meal to fly by.
The eastern kingbird is another member of the flycatcher family. An interesting fact about eastern kingbirds, according to the Cornell website, is that when they migrate to South America during the winter they are mostly fruit eaters.
Another bird that eats mainly insects in the summer and fruit in the winter was also hanging around, although cedar waxwing are not members of the flycatcher family.
There was also a consistent amount of waterfowl that hung around the lake through out the summer. These were mainly mallards, wood ducks and female hooded mergansers.
The male hooded merganser are usually no where to be found after the breeding season. Once the eggs are laid the male leaves the female hoody to incubate them on her own, which is why we typically only see the females by late summer. Once the eggs hatch the chicks will be able to swim and catch food with in 24 hours. The female will continue to stay with the young, and show them where to find food, for a few weeks but she will leave them even before they can fly, at about 70 days. I tend to see a good number of hoodies around the parks where I live each summer. This is probably do to the number of wood duck boxes that people have put up in the area. Hoodies are cavity nesters and will often nest in wood duck boxes.

My World: Maplewood Nature Center

On this week's edition of My World we will be visiting the Maplewood Nature Center in Maplewood Minnesota.

I visited Maplewood Nature Center for the first time this summer. I found out about it through the Minnesota Odonata Survey Project, which advertised a dragonfly workshop at the center.

The main entrance into the nature center is through gates located next to the visitors center. Just inside the gate, and surrounding a couple sides of the visitors center, is a wonderful butterfly garden.

In late summer and early fall this was the best spot that I found for getting great monarch pics.

Monarchs were not the only butterfly that visited the center's garden. This was the only place that I got descent tiger swallowtail pics in 2008.

One of the things that I really enjoy about MNC is the serenity. Many of the other places that I bird I find people walking dogs, biking, or jogging the trails. These are all perfectly fine pursuits but they are not very productive to have around when you are trying to get that great warbler pic or when you are hoping that the raptor you just spotted stays perched long enough for you to get into position to get a shot.

A large portion of the nature center is covered by a shallow lake and several adjacent ponds. A boardwalk trail cuts across the lake letting people get a closer look at the lakes flora and fauna.

During the warm months I could always find ducks and mergansers on the lake. This included hooded mergansers, mallards, and wood ducks, like the one pictured above.

There was also a good population of green heron spending the summer here.

There were many other things to photograph out on the lake though. Dragonflies, like this dot-tailed whiteface, where abundant both near the water and in the surrounding fields.

Amphibians, such as frogs and turtles where also prevalent.

One of my favorite birding spots for the summer of 2008 was this small island in the lake in MNC.

The island always had a good variety of birds, like this olive-sided flycatcher. Many of the birds would sit out in the open, perhaps they felt more secure because they were on an island, making it very easy to photograph them from the boardwalk.

Although it is not as big as some of the other parks that I visit there were still plenty of trails through out many different types of habitat.

If you looked hard while you were on the trails you would find that the park was teeming with wildlife, especially birds. Although its call is easily recognized, the gray catbird is usually not very easy to spot.

Eastern phoebe, however, do not seem to be as leery of people. There was usually a few phoebes around hunting for flying insects in the woods and around the lake.

Monarch Maplewood Aug

With all of the cold and grey days that we have been having for the past week or so I thought that it would be nice to post something bright and cheerful.
So I pulled up one of the pics that I have been saving for the long winter months when there is not a whole lot of bright and cheerful things around here to photograph. I took this monarch pic back in August at the Maplewood Nature Center.

Maplewood Green Heron and the Giant Crayfish

One of the highlight of my visits to the Maplewood Nature Center, this summer, were the green herons that were living in the park.
On one of my first trips, back on July 31st, I had the privilege of being to photograph one of the herons while it was hunting in the shallow parts of the lake.

Green Heron hunt by standing very still in the shallow water and then darting forward to catch their prey in their bill.
Sometimes they even drop bait, such as worms, twigs or feathers to lure its prey with in range.
Their prey consists of fish, frogs, bugs, invertebrates and other small animals.
This heron thought that this was its lucky that day, because he caught a gigantic crayfish for dinner.
Unfortunately, for the heron, the crayfish was more then a mouth full for the bird. Although he tried for quite a while to figure out a way to devour his prize.

Fortunately for the crayfish the heron was not successful and eventually he gave up and the crayfish got away.
Still hungry the heron took off on the hunt again, slowly stalking through the muck.
It did not take him long to find something else of interest.
With a lunge he caught something a bit more manageable.

I am not sure what it was, maybe a leach or a tadpole or small fish.
Whatever it was it was a lot easier to eat then the huge crayfish.
So although he was not able to capitalize on his super catch he did not go away hungry that day.

Maplewoood Nature Center Ducklings

Today has not been a very good day for me. First off the weather has been miserable all day, with cold temps and off and on snow/rain/sleet and ice. Then things have just been breaking out of the blue and the finally is when I clipped the corner of our garage when pulling in and broke the plastic cover over my headlight.
So I decided to post something that would be cute and upbeat so that it might help to cheer me up.
So here are some pics of a couple of baby ducklings that I photographed back on August 18th at the Maplewood Nature Center.
I am not sure what type of ducks that they were, since many female ducks look similar and mom was the only parental supervision around.
One thing that is very noticeable to me when I look at these pics is the difference in light that we have here in Minnesota during the summer compared to what we get in the winter. The light in these pics looks so vibrant and warm.

During the winter we typically have a lot of overcast grey skies. This is the thing that I dislike most about winter in my part of the world. When we do get clear skies it is usually extremely cold and that has its own effect on light. One day when I retire, if I ever can retire, hope that I can spend my winters down in Florida, south Texas, New Mexico and California.

A World with out Dragons is almost Upon Us.

This weekend the weather has been very nice hear in southeast Minnesota but unfortunately the birding has not been so great. Even when I was up in two harbors on yesterday I ran into a few birders who were lamenting the quiet fall migration that we have seen so far this year. In the past few months I have supplemented the blog with dragonfly pics when ever the birding was slow. Unfortunately dragons are now in short supply with winter approaching.
Fortunately I still have quit a few posts that I took earlier in the summer with dragons in them so hopefully I will be able to continue to provide some variety even when mother nature seems to be a little short, at least around where I live.
These pictures were taken on my first trip to Maplewood Nature Center back on July 31st. The first two pics are of meadowhawks. Most likely they are white-faced meadowhawks due to the pearly white face.
This other dragon is I believe a red-waisted whiteface. I was not able to get a photo of the face to tell if it was indeed white but because it has a long thin abdomen with white, pruinose, at the base it would only fit either a red-waisted or frosted whiteface in this area. Since there appears to be red on the back then that would eliminate the frosted which leaves only the red-waisted. This was the only probable red-waisted whiteface that I found all summer.