Category: Flowers and Plants

Categories
Birding Flowers and Plants Herps Insects

Snakes and Birds

I was looking around the area by the camper when I found two Vesper Sparrows obviously agitated about something other than me. I searched the ground near where they seemed to be focusing their attention.
And this is what I found. An Eastern Racer had captured one of their nestlings and was in the process of swallowing it. Although the Latin name for this species is Coluber constrictor, Eastern Racers are not a true constrictor, usually swallowing their prey alive. In this case, I think the bird was suffocated first. I watched it for a long time but it finally took the bird into some tall grass where I couldn’t get photos.
One afternoon I found this Rufous Hummingbird at the feeder, two days later it is still here and another one has joined it. I took a hike in Hell Canyon this morning and saw two more! This one is an immature female.
Here’s one of the Rufous Hummingbirds in Hell Canyon, an immature male.
And now a few flowers and butterflies: Richardson’s Geranium, in Hell Canyon.
A Reakirt’s Blue on Dalea.
And another Juniper Hairstreak, also on Dalea.
Categories
Birding Flowers and Plants

Back in the Black Hills

I left the Slim Buttes on Wednesday and headed for Spearfish Canyon. I got a campsite at Rod and Gun Campground. It has been a few years since I’ve in this part of the hills and it didn’t take long to remember why. There are ATV’s and people everywhere. The development of Roughlock Falls has done nothing but attract more people. Anyone who wants some quiet must be there at sunrise, then one can have a couple of hours of quiet for some birding. At any rate, I was glad to leave. I am back at my quiet spot in the southern Black Hills. It is free (Rod and Gun is $21.50 a night) and quiet. The logging is pretty much over or has moved far to the south. This morning I hiked up Hell Canyon and picked up a Lewis’s Woodpecker for my year list. At Jumpoff Spring I added a Townsend’s Solitaire. I’m up to 330 species now for my year list.

One of my target birds at Roughlock Falls was a Veery, which had been reported on eBird. It didn’t take long to find it early Thursday morning.
American Dippers have nested at the falls for many years, probably centuries. I found this one roosting over the waterfall and caught it winking its white eyelid. It is thought that dippers use the white eyelid to signal each other. In their noisy environment, visual signals work better than calls.
I also visited Ward Draw, hoping for some other birds I needed and got several Golden-crowned Kinglets. Ward Draw was a pleasant change from Roughlock Falls, no one else was there.
In Ward Draw I saw lots of Twinflower, a common flower in spruce forest of the Black Hills.

On the Rimrock Trail above Rod and Gun Campground I came across a few Wood Lily.
A Bee-mimic Robber Fly. I don’t think I have ever seen one before. This was in Ward Draw.
Categories
Birding Flowers and Plants Insects Mammals

Slim Buttes

I’ve been checking out the area, picking up a few more new birds. Yesterday there was an eBird alert on a Cassin’s Kingbird just 20 miles away, so I went to look for it this morning. I did not find it and neither did another birder who came to look for it. Cassin’s Kingbird is quite rare in South Dakota but I saw lots of them in Arizona and New Mexico this spring. I did finally find a Mountain Bluebird though, which brought me up to 324 species.

I found a pair of Long-billed Curlews on the Park Road, they must have had young ones hidden in the grass as they kept harassing me. This may be the best flight shot I’ve ever got of a Long-billed Curlew.
A mother Pronghorn with her twins. There are lots of Pronghorns around, this just happened to be close to the road and in nice light!
I was at the pond in Deer Draw this morning, when I heard a slurping sound. I crept up to the pond and saw this cow Elk in the water, as soon as she saw me she took off. Photo in bad light.
Yellow Avens (Geum aleppicum) with a visiting Nomad Bee. Yellow Avens is a common flower that is native across temperate North America, Europe and Asia.
A Badger I saw way out on the prairie, I could not get closer.
Weidemeyer’s Admiral on Woodbine.
Wilson’s Snipe on a post by a small wetland.
The 324th species for my year list, a Mountain Bluebird.
Categories
Birding Flowers and Plants Insects

Out West Again

I’m currently in the Slim Buttes of Harding County. I spent a few days at a Shadehill Reservoir campground, near Lemmon, South Dakota. The Grand River National Grassland is in this area and is a good place to get Baird’s Sparrow. I left there this morning and its a good thing as that campground just got hit by a severe thunderstorm, with large hail and strong wind. It is nice here. So far no mosquitoes. I’m up to 322 species of birds for the year now. It is getting harder to find new ones, but I seem to get one or two every day since I left Pierre.

Finding a Caspian Tern was surprisingly difficult but I finally got one on Discovery Island while I was still in Pierre.
A wet Baird’s Sparrow. I only saw three and heard several, the Merlin app picked up more but I couldn’t hear them. A very secretive bird that usually hides in the grass, on this morning I found this one on the road, I assume it was avoiding the wet grass.
My 322nd species for the year, Trumpeter Swans at the JB Pond. They have nested there for several years now.

A fledgling Chestnut-collared Longspur in the rain. I suspect these young birds were having a hard time staying warm. Some seemed quite lethargic. There were lots of them on the road and I saw some dead ones.
A distant shot of a Short-eared Owl. This is another species that I haven’t seen for a long time. I’m hoping for some better opportunities!
A Wolf Spider carrying her young.
A Silvery Blue butterfly, one of the few butterflies I’ve been able to photograph recently.
The Grand River National Grassland has an abundance of wild flowers, I selected this one to show, Yellow Sundrops, Oenothera serrulata.
A female Lazuli Bunting that posed nicely for me.
Categories
Birding Flowers and Plants Herps

More Birds and Few Other Things

My 2024 year bird list keeps growing, but more slowly. I’m up to 310 species now. Perhaps the most exciting was a Scarlet Tanager on LaFramboise Island. Scarlet Tanagers are not very common in this part of the world. A Dunlin was another good find but I had already seen one in Arizona this year so it didn’t add to my species list.

I got this male Scarlet Tanager yesterday. This morning, Rick and Susan went back with me and we found the male and this time a female. I didn’t get any photos better than this one though.
Susan spotted a patch of Meadow Anemones, I haven’t seen this plant in flower for a long time so I had to take a photo.
A Blue Grosbeak in the shelterbelt behind the house. I had spotted this bird a few days before but this is the first chance I’ve had to photograph it.
I made another trip to the Fort Pierre National Grasslands to pick up a few new species. I got some Greater Prairie Chickens and some Chestnut-collared Longspurs. I found a pair of longspurs that were on a prairie dog mound, this female was preening and fluffing out enough to reveal a brood patch.
Here’s the male in flight, not the best photo but not too bad either. In the same area, I got 5 Greater Prairie Chickens but they all flushed at a distance so no photos.
An Upland Sandpiper walking through the grass, the yellow flowers are buttercups.
Another nice find, a Dunlin at the same wetland the Red Knot was found at a couple of weeks ago. There are only two other records in eBird of a Dunlin on the FPNG.
Another first for the year, a Field Sparrow.
Here’s a Prairie Rattlesnake I came across in the prairie dog colony. I wanted to get it in better light but it went down a hole before I could get it to move.
Nothing special, a Common Yellowthroat, but I really like this sharp image as it clings sideways on a cattail stalk.
Categories
Birding Flowers and Plants

300 Species of Birds

I’m back in Pierre, South Dakota again. I picked up a few more birds in Nebraska but since I’ve been back in South Dakota, I have picked up 47 more species. Today, I got the 300th, a pair of Common Terns. Just a few minutes ago, 301 with a Common Nighthawk fly over. I missed a lot of migrants though, I found hardly any migrant warblers, vireos, and sparrows. I missed out on Harris’s Sparrows and others that I expected to get. I will have to try for some of those in the fall. But, I’m still doing pretty good, I have almost double the number of species I had this time last year.

By far the best bird I’ve seen since getting back to SD is this Red Knot. Dan Svingen found it on the Fort Pierre National Grassland and it stayed long enough for several local birders to see it. I have seen eight Red Knots in South Dakota in my lifetime.
Also present were a good number of Short-billed Dowitchers. There were a lot of shorebirds present.
Of the few migrant warblers I saw, I did manage a couple of Magnolia Warblers. I also got Blackpoll and Tennessee warblers.
Then there are the local breeding warblers, like this American Redstart.
On my way through Nebraska, I stopped at Valentine National Wildlife Refuge for a short walk. I saw these flowers along a trail, different than anything I’ve seen in the northern plains. This is Manystem Pea, Lathyrus polymorphus. It is a legume that is found in sandy soils of Nebraska, northeast Colorado and southwest South Dakota.
Categories
Flowers and Plants Herps

Texas Horned Lizard

After all the miles of hiking around Granite Gap area, looking for lizards (and especially lifer herps!) I have never found a Texas Horned Lizard. This morning, I went to Lordsburg for groceries and gas and on the return trip took the road to Animas from I-10. About ten miles down the road, there was an odd looking lizard on the road, so I turned around and slowly approached it. It was a Texas Horned Lizard! Fortunately, State Highway 338 has very little traffic and I was able to take photos from the truck. I wanted to take more photos in a natural setting but when I parked the truck on the side of the road and started walking toward it, the lizard scooted off into some thick brush and I lost it.

And here it is. The light stripe down the center of the back is diagnostic, as is the arrangement of the occipital horns. There are also two rows of abdominal fringe scales.
Another angle. Over its range, Texas Horned Lizards are not doing well. The species has disappeared from nearly half of its original range.
Also along that road, I found several of these plants, Davis Mountains Mock Vervain, Glandularia pubera. Since the Davis Mountains are in Texas, it seems to fit with a Texas Horned Lizard. I can find no interesting facts about this plant.
Categories
Astrophotography Birding Blacklighting Flowers and Plants

Granite Gap

I’m still here, the weather is great and I’m having a good time. I’ve made a few trips to Cave Creek and one trip up to Rustler Park. At Rustler Park, nearly 10,000 ft. elevation, there is still snow in the gullies. I’ve been picking up birds that I haven’t seen for years, only because I haven’t looked for them. I’m at 220 species now, compared to 151 at this time last year.

Grace’s Warbler. These are fairly common in the pines but difficult to get a photo of.
I found a nice flock of Mexican Chickadees. In the same area, I got two Olive Warblers, but the photos are not worth showing.
On the road down from Rustler Park, I got two Montezuma Quail. Here’s one of them.
I have now seen three Gila Monsters in the Granite Gap area. Here’s the third one, just this morning.
I put out the black light one night while doing astro. I got some interesting insects. This one is Lineostriastiria hachita, an owlet moth that is rarely reported and almost nothing is known about it. Records are from southeast Arizona, southern New Mexico, west Texas and down into Mexico.
Theodore Carpenterworm Moth, Givira theodori. Larvae of this interesting looking moth are wood borers. It has a distribution similar to Lineostriastiria hachita.
Catclaw Mimosa, very common around Granite Gap and now in flower. This shrub has recurved spines that catch on clothing when walking through it.
Fendler’s Hedgehog Cactus, Echinocereus fendleri ssp. fendleri. There are quite a few in flower now.
Caldwell 45, also catalogued as NGC5248. Sixty million light years out there, in the direction of the constellation Bootes.
NGC 4414, 62 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. It is a flocculent spiral galaxy, without the well-defined spiral arms of a grand design spiral galaxy. I should have spent more time on this one but this is what I have. There are lots of small background galaxies in this image.
Categories
Birding Flowers and Plants Herps

On the Road Again

I left Ajo last Monday and drove to the Empire Ranch, also known as Las Cienegas National Conservation Area. It has been several years since I’ve stopped there. I spent 3 days birding in the Empire Gulch, Box Canyon, Madera Canyon, and the Patagonia area. I picked up a lot of birds that I haven’t seen for years, but the photography wasn’t very good. Some of the best birds were Thick-billed Kingbird, Berylline Hummingbird, Violet-crowned Hummingbird, many Gray Hawks, several Zone-tailed Hawks, and an Arizona Woodpecker, among many other species. Here are a few eBird checklists: Box Canyon, Santa Rita Lodge in Madera Canyon, Madera Kubo Lodge, Patagonia Blue Haven Rd., Pattons, and Empire Gulch. I’m trying to live up to my New Year’s Resolution, to pick up as many species as I can this year. So far, I’m at 191 species, compared to 145 at this time last year. Now, I’m at Granite Gap. I plan to continue birding in as many places as I can get to for the next few days, then focus on astrophotography.

Just before leaving Ajo, I got this photo of a pair of Western Screech-Owls, one with a Western Banded Gecko.
And here’s another Elf Owl, from Ajo.
A Sidewinder I found by my camper one night after returning from owling, still in Ajo.
A male Wilson’s Warbler in Empire Gulch.
A Chihuahuan Meadowlark at Empire Ranch. Formerly considered a race of the Eastern Meadowlark, now it is a full species.

Cliff Fendlerbush, Fendlera rupicola. Whole hillsides displayed this shrub in flower in Box Canyon.
I had just drove though the gate into Granite Gap when this Gila Monster crossed the road in front of me. My first one this spring.
Categories
Astrophotography Birding Flowers and Plants Insects

Mid April Update

I am still in Ajo. As long as it doesn’t get too hot, I’m not inclined to leave. I had a few good nights for astro but now the moon is getting bright again. Although the new dual band filter allows me to image nebulas in moonlight, it does not work for galaxies. Light pollution and moonlight are galaxies killers! Dark skies are needed. Birding has remained slow. I do have a few photos to show though.

This is a new one for me, a hybrid Blue-winged Teal X Cinnamon Teal. One can see a partial facial crescent, the white flank mark and spotting of a Blue-winged Teal on the hybrid. The top of the head is greenish on both birds shown here. I never noticed that on a male Cinnamon Teal before but it is there. Not the best of photos, the Ajo sewage ponds are a terrible place for photography. The birds are too far away and shooting is through a chain link fence, not a good combination.
I haven’t seen an Elf Owl for several years now, only because I haven’t looked. Last night I decided to go owling and found this Elf Owl. These owls are migratory, I’ve seen them as early as late March, they will get easier to find as the weather warms.
A crane fly on a fiddleneck plant. Nothing too special about either one, I just like the photo.
M94, sometimes called the Croc’s Eye Galaxy. I tried this years ago before I was guiding, the results were not very good. I also remember seeing that faint nebulosity surrounding the inner galaxy and thinking it must be some kind of processing artifact that I needed to get rid of. It is not, that is real. Rather than repeat everything known about this galaxy, you can read all about it HERE.
This is M109, a galaxy not far from M94, in Ursa Major. The most distant identifiable object in the image is the luminous galaxy SDSS J115722.65+531644.3, annotated in white. Its redshift indicates a distance of nearly 3.5 billion light years.
Known as the Umbrella Galaxy, NGC 4651 is in the Virgo Galaxy Cluster. The name is due to the umbrella-shaped structure that extends from its disk. It is composed of stellar streams, the remnants of a much smaller galaxy that has been torn apart by NGC 4651’s tidal forces. I really had to push the processing to make that show up!