Mourning Cloak

While I have been out photographing owls at the Dodge Nature Center the past few days I have noticed that there are already insects flying around. Last week I spotted a honey bee, no doubt from the nature centers hives, and this weekend I have seen some small moth type insects. I have not seen any of the larger fun insects that I like to photograph like dragonflies or butterflies but with high temps this week close to or into the 60s I might start to see them this week. Usually the first butterfly that I see each year is the mourning cloak. This butterfly over winters as an adult. It will go into a type of hibernated state in a protected place producing a natural type of anti-freeze to help keep itself alive over the cold Minnesota winter. As soon as it begins to get warm, often not much above 50 degrees then these butterflies come back alive and go out looking to mate and begin a new generation.

Wood Lake Nature Center

Yesterday turned out to be a fabulous day weather wise, so I decided to go out and take some pictures before an afternoon dinner with Michelle's family. Since my time was limited I decided that it was best to stay in the Twin Cities so I went out to check on some of my favorite haunts including Wood Lake Nature Center. The visitors center was closed due to the holiday, but the park was open and occupied with quite a few visitors.
I was encouraged to see quite a few signs of spring. Insects have begun to spring up now that the weather has gotten a bit warmer. There were already plenty of flies and box elder bugs flying around. A few green darner dragonflies had completed their northern migration and were chasing the small flying insects in the fields and mourning cloak butterflies were warming their wings in the sun. Mourning cloaks over winter in their adult butterfly form, that is why they are usually the first butterflies that you can see in the spring. Soon they will mate and then pass from the world making way for their offspring.
The first warblers of the year have also arrived. Yellow-rumped warblers seem to be everywhere. Warblers are typically insect eaters so they do not usually return until after the bugs do. Since yellow-rumps do not typically migrate as far south as most other warblers they are usually the first to arrive in the spring, as well as the last to leave in the fall.
Canada geese have already begun to nest. They usually nest on islands of reeds in the middle of the lake. This gives the nest some protection from predators like fox and coyote. Then they use many of their own down feathers to line the nest, making a soft feathery bed for the eggs.
Much of Wood Lake Nature Center is occupied by Wood Lake and adjacent wetlands. The lake itself is very shallow, only a couple of feet deep in many locations, and has a boardwalk running through the middle of it.There are wood duck houses that have been placed around the lake, as well as in some of the parks other water features, to provide nesting habitat for cavity nesting ducks such as Wood Ducks. Because the correct habitat is carefully maintained it is possible to see wood ducks in the park almost any time that you want to visit.

It is not only wood ducks that take advantage of the wood duck nesting boxes though, hooded mergansers are also cavity nesters and frequently will take over nest boxes in the park. During mating season both male and female can often be seen floating on the lake but later on in the summer the males will move off leaving the female to raise the family.
The turtles were also out enjoying the sun and the warm weather. Turtles are reptiles and as such are cold blooded. So they rely on the sun to warm them up which helps them to move better, digest food and fight diseases. They use logs, rocks, or any other make shift platform to bask in the sun, often piling on top of each other, or staking, in order to get more sun.
With dinner time approaching I decided to make my way back to the parking lot. On my way I noticed this great egret flying across the beautiful blue sky. I think that perhaps he had the same idea and was heading off to his in laws for dinner, but I doubt that it was ham and German potato salad.

Camera Critters: My First Butterfly of 2009

Today was the first full day of spring, spring officially began sometime between 6 and 7 am CST yesterday, but today was the first full day and it was fitting that today I spotted my first butterfly of 2009.
The weather was gorgeous today with plenty of sun and the temp almost reaching 60, one bank thermometer read 59, so I headed south in search of new birds that may have begun to migrate through. I spotted several new species, like northern shoveler and ring-necked ducks as well as some that I began to see the weekend before like grackles and red-winged blackbirds but the most exciting thing, for me was not even a bird.

As I drove through Whitewater State Park I stopped to take some pics of a couple of immature eagles perched in the trees. As I headed back to my truck I noticed something flutter across the street. At first I thought it was a leaf but it seemed to fly to deliberately so I decided to check it out. At first it was difficult to find, as the wings were up and it looked a lot like another leaf on the side of the road, see the top pic. I probably would have missed it if it had not decided to open its wings.

This is a mourning cloak. It is typically the first type of butterfly that we see each spring up here in the north. The reason that mourning cloaks are out earlier in the year then most butterflies is because they hibernate in their adult butterfly form. This is not common, at least not up here, where we get cold winters. Most butterflies get through the winter in one of their other three forms, egg, larva, also called Caterpillar, or pupae, also called chrysalis, but the mourning cloak produces a chemical which is like a natural antifreeze. It uses this chemical to keep it alive while it hibernates in a sheltered location over the winter.

Fun Bugs at Wood Lake

Over the past couple years I have spent a lot of time in fields. I walk through the grasses and wild flowers in search of interesting wildlife to take pictures of. Often I am surrounding by the buzzing of bees as they move from bloom to bloom but never while I have been out photographing insects in the field have I ever been stung. Unfortunately I can not say the same thing as far as being in my truck driving home from work.

Last fall as I got into my truck to come home from work I was stung on my arm by a yellow jacket. That was nothing though compared to this year. Yesterday I was on my way home from work, driving down the freeway when I felt a sharp pain in my right shoulder blade. Right away I thought that I had been stung but since I was on a freeway I could not stop. I leaned forward in my car seat and began to feel around for the culprit. I found nothing. I began to wonder if it was not just a nerve spike that sometimes I get as a diabetic, although usually in my arms, hands, feet or legs, especially since I had not heard any buzzing and I had been driving for over 15 minutes before the pain started. I began to relax and since the initial pain was diminishing began to slowly sit back. That was when I felt another shot of pain. Fortunately I was getting off the freeway and only a few minutes from home so I drove the rest of the way home leaning forward. When I got home I took off my shirt off right away and ran to the mirror to take a look. Sure enough there were 3 sting marks on my back but I still did not know what happened to the bee. That was until I shook my shirt out a bit and out fell a yellow jacket.

Maybe I should look into getting a bee keepers suite to keep me safe on my drive home.
In the fields I will just keep wearing jeans and a tee shirt because out there the bees, like the one above, are more interested in collecting pollen and nectar then they are stinging me. This bee is pretty loaded up with pollen, you can see the full orange pollen sack on its leg.
I was kind of excited to get these next couple of pics. Not because the red milkweed beetle is a rare insect that is difficult to find but instead because one of the guys that I work with went to college down in Austin, Texas and he is a big Texas Longhorn fan.
These beetles lay their eggs at the base of the milkweed plant. When the eggs hatch the larvae bore into the milkweed stem. They will spend the winter as larvae down in the roots. In the spring they will pupate and emerge as adults early in the summer. The adults usually can be found eating milkweed leaves, the toxicity of which make the red milkweed beetle a distasteful morsel to most predators.
The mourning cloak butterfly, on the other hand, is one of the few butterflies that over winters as an adult, in the northern portions of its range. This butterfly hibernates in suspended animation in a sheltered location over the winter. During this time the mourning cloak secretes chemicals like sorbital into their bodies which act as a natural antifreeze and prevent ice crystals from forming inside the butterfly.
This last picture is I believe a moth but I have no idea what kind. I am hoping that maybe some of the people over at bugguide.net, who I invited to come and take a look at the blog, can give me some idea as to what type of moth that this is. If you think that you might have an idea please post a comment to this post.

Woodlake Butterflies

The next morning I decided to check out Woodlake Nature Center to see what wildlife I could photograph. I found some more early morning butterflies to shoot.
This least skipper was unusually cooperative which is good because I was photographing it with a 400mm lens. This means that I had to be about 4 to 5 feet away and had to use manual focus.
In this picture it is easy to see the proboscis inserted into the flower which the butterfly uses like a straw to drink nectar.
I also found a mourning cloak butterfly. Mourning cloaks have the longest life span of any butterfly in North America.
The mourning cloak is one of only a hand full of butterflies that overwinters in its adult butterfly form. When winter comes the mourning cloak will find a sheltered spot, somewhere like a crevice of a tree or building, where it will spend most of the winter in a state of suspended animation to conserve energy. To prevent their bodies from freezing the produce chemicals, such as sorbitol, which act as a natural antifreeze. When the weather begins to warm up the mourning cloaks come to life, as early as March some years in my area of the world. Shortly after, dependent on the weather, they will mate, lay eggs and then their life cycle will be complete after 10 to 11 months of life.

Butterflies from Fort Snelling State Park

I will be out birding today and hopefully getting a lot of good pics to share. I have to keep John entertained after all, LOL. Hopefully I will start getting some pics up in a couple of days but right now I am stuck using a hotel PC today and tomorrow so no uploading. But I usually am prepared and I have a few posts of pics waiting. While birding around Fort Snelling I stopped to take a few butterfly pics.

mourning cloak
Cabbage white.

This was the first time that I have seen cabbage white butterflies so I am hopeful that soon there will be more butterflies and dragonflies to photograph. Unfortunately a lot of the best places that I found last year are currently under water, we had more snow last winter and a rainy spring so there is a lot of extra water around.

Birds, Butterflies and Turtles atWood Lake

My last stop on April 20th was the Wood Lake Nature Center.

At Wood Lake I found another mourning cloak butterfly to photograph.
American robins are pretty common now so I am not as excited to see them as I was when they were first returning back in March. This robin gave me a nice pose though so I figured that he wanted to have his picture taken.
The hoodies are still around. On this trip they were in one of the ponds on the outer trail near to the freeway so the pics were not as good as I got last time.
There were also a lot of turtles sunning themselves on rocks or logs that were sticking out of the water. This guy slid into the water when I came by but decided to take a peek and check me out as I was checking him out and taking a pic.

Butterflies Before the Snow

Minnesota is known as the land of 10,000 lakes but what most people, who do not live in this area, do not know is that Minnesota is also the land of 10,000 weather changes. For instance last weekend started off cloudy, then it cleared up and by mid week the temps were getting close to 80 degrees, and then by Friday our temps were down in the 30s and 40s and we got snow over night. This not only screws up nature enthusiast, like myself, I imagine it does a pretty good job of screwing up the flora and fauna also. Like last Sunday when the sun finally came out I made a trip to Fort Snelling State Park to do a bit of birding. While I was birding I was excited to see another eastern comma butterfly.
This is the second eastern comma that I have photographed this year, however I have not seen many butterflies since I saw the first one a couple weeks before at the North Mississippi Regional Park. There were a couple of nice high 60s days back then and I spotted a couple of butterflies but then the weather changed and got a bit colder and the butterflies became scarce again.
When it warmed up again last weekend the butterflies came back out, I photographed this mourning cloak at Fort Snelling last Sunday also, but I am afraid that now that the weather has changed again, that I probably wont see butterflies again until it warms up.