Tangled Branches: Cultivated

happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia

Friday, July 03, 2009

Butterflies and Associates

A mostly-pictures post with all of last Friday's butterfly photos. With any luck I can repeat the exercise today. Butterflies are fluttering and dragonflies are zipping and hovering all over the garden and meadow at this time of year. I find dragonflies to be much harder to photograph than butterflies.

You've already seen the Great Spangled Fritillary, but this is a different shot.

I created a Flickr account several months ago and have been posting photos there as well as to Picasaweb. The photo above is posted at Flickr.

This American Lady butterfly was nectaring on Spotted Knapweed too, but then flew off to rest in a Juniper tree.

Two different kinds of Oregano are in bloom and both are very popular with the butterflies and bees. This is an Orange Sulphur on the purple/pink flowered Oregano. I think the botanical name is Origanum vulgare, but Oregano taxonomy is confusing at best.

Here's a Cabbage White on the same Oregano. A very common butterfly, probably the most common butterfly in my garden, but check out the bee about to come in for a landing.

On the white-flowered Oregano, I found a Gray Hairstreak...

...which seems to be the same individual I photographed earlier in the meadow. Notice the same notch out of one wing.

Now we come to the Skippers. They still drive me to despair trying to identify them. Any idea which one this is?

These two, I believe, are Least Skippers. There should be more of them around for future study.

OK, that's it for the butterflies. Now we have the associates. 2007 was the first summer I planted lots and lots of Verbena bonariensis. Suddenly, it became easy to photograph clearwing moths because they just can't get enough Verbena nectar. They're so attracted to it that they let me get very close with the camera. This is a Snowberry Clearwing Moth.

And, lastly, a new-to-me dragonfly. This - a Banded Pennant - is small compared to some of the helicopter-sized ones I haven't yet been able to photograph.

Labels: butterflies, dragonflies, insects, moths

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Nong Nooch

This is too big a coincidence to ignore. Earlier in the week as I leafed through a stack of old magazines headed for the recycling bin, an article about Nong Nooch Tropical Botanical Garden captivated me enough that I tore out the page, intending to look it up on the internet sometime. Then yesterday morning, I discovered the beautiful travel photographs of Vladimir on Picasaweb. Guess where he visited?

Located near Pattaya in Thailand, this is an amazing garden if you like the tropical look. Or even if you don't. They have a replica of Stonehenge, for example, and some European statuary. But it was the tropical topiary and parterres that caught my attention. A world away, literally and figuratively, from my scruffy naturalistic patch of temperate zone woodland and meadow.

My meadow:

Nong Nooch:
From Wikipedia: Nong Nooch Tropical Botanical Garden

See the difference?

But both have butterflies. I spent some time yesterday afternoon stalking butterflies through the meadow and garden, but haven't edited all the photos yet. Next post!

Labels: butterflies, public gardens, wildflowers

Monday, June 08, 2009

Swallows and Swallowtails

Is this a Barn Swallow? I think so, but would like to be sure. If I'm correct, the identifying field marks are the orangish throat and belly and the long, forked tail. I've never seen one before, at least not one that I got a good look at, and even here I wouldn't have had a good look without the camera.

A dark Tiger Swallowtail was feasting on the 'Munstead' lavender in the kitchen garden, and while they're nectaring they're much easier to photograph. So I got the camera with the lens I use for closeups and started stalking the butterfly for a good shot. I was soon distracted by a dark bird soaring, swooping and diving over the garden and the meadow beyond.

Hey, it's some kind of swallow. I should take a photo.
Yeah, but this is the wrong lens. You won't get anything worthwhile.
But if I don't try, I won't have anything.

So I switched the camera to Sports Mode and tried first to just catch the bird in the frame and then to pan with the bird as best I could. It was FAST. I got a lot of blurry shots and a few where you could tell there was a bird in the photo. And from those photos, I can see there is a long, forked tail and an orangish underside. Virginia Bird Watching says "the barn swallow is the only American swallow that has a true "swallow tail", with an elongated outer pair of tail feathers."

Which, of course, is where our "swallow tail" butterflies got their name.

Labels: birds, butterflies

Friday, May 29, 2009

Things I Never Saw Before

Lately, I've been thinking this blog might be getting a bit stale. You know... repetitive, undifferentiated ........ boring.

Then, out of nowhere, nature conspires to shake me out of my doldrums. I was walking toward the vegetable garden with tools in my hands when I saw something not quite right. There seemed to be a lump of dirt...moving. Gee, that looks like a big turtle. Back I ran to the house to drop the garden tools and pick up the camera. It is a big turtle. I would guess the shell was 10 to 12 inches long.

Apparently an Eastern Snapping Turtle. That's the closest match I could find on the Turtles of Virginia page at the Virginia Herpetological Society website. I had never seen one before and was surprised because I assumed they were exclusively pond dwellers. Last I saw it, it was headed for our tiny little stream.

The next day I heard, then saw an Eastern Meadowlark.

A beautifully patterned bird, with a pretty (loud) song. And I had never seen one before.

Earlier, I found this moth with an odd bat-faced look.

Moth Update, June 5: It's been raining steadily since I got up this morning, so I had time to try to identify the moth today. I think it's a Harnessed Tiger Moth (Apantesis phalerata). There are several species of Tiger Moths, but the black spots which appear to be eyes (and are not) are a distinguishing mark of Apantesis phalerata.

And watched a Tufted Titmouse extracting larval bald-faced hornets from this nest.

Then while out photographing some of the meadow wildflowers (next post!), I found a new-to-me butterfly: the Carolina Satyr.

So that's five things I never saw before that magically materialized before my eyes in just a few days last weekend. Got to get back outside and keep looking...need new material for the blog.

Labels: birds, butterflies, critters, moths, turtles

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Flowery Interlude

Are you tired of reading about vegetables here? How about flowers and butterflies for a change?

The meadow below the vegetable garden has turned gold with these exuberant Tickseeds (Bidens sp.). What you can't see from that photo is the huge number of tiny skippers flitting about them.

The flowers have an attractive honey-sweet fragrance too, but you'll just have to trust me or find some and do your own sniff test.

One of my favorite fall wildflowers is Ironweed (Vernonia sp.). I don't have many of these and I wish I did. It takes a lot of them to make an impression.

The one above is past its prime, but the flowers are pretty close up. The photo below shows the individual fringe-y florets, but if you want a good look, click through and magnify the image (button will be above the photo, right corner).

Near the Ironweed, you can clearly see the path the deer made through the meadow between the woods and the vegetable garden. But I'm not going to talk about vegetables today.

My mystery wildflower continues to bloom. I've looked through several wildflower books and websites and I'm still stumped. It's about 8 inches tall with thin opposite leaves. There were 3 plants scattered in various places at the edge of the woods, but 2 of them vanished during the August drought. The survivor was the largest of the 3. I don't remember seeing this flower last summer.

This Cloudless Sulphur butterfly is a big one, much larger than the more common Clouded Sulphur. I've seen them a few times this summer and always on these pale orchid-purple petunias, where their color is complemented perfectly. According to Butterflies through Binoculars, they have the unusual habit of migrating north in the autumn.

And just like caterpillars into butterflies, pepper flowers turn into fruit! More later about my cooking experiments with Ají Dulce and associates.

Labels: butterflies, critters, peppers, petunias, wildflowers

Monday, August 18, 2008

Hanging Out to Dry

Walking through the garden near lunchtime yesterday, we came upon this newly-emerged female Black Swallowtail. Her colors were vibrant and fresh, and she was nearly motionless.

By the time I got back with the camera, she started to move around a bit. That's how I determined that she was a she. If she was a he, there would be a prominent band of yellow spots on the upper surface of the wings. But since she is a she, she wears less yellow and more blue.

I thought she might be ready to fly away at this point, but she wasn't quite ready yet. I left her alone to get used to life as a butterfly.

Labels: butterflies, insects

Saturday, August 02, 2008

Wild Things

Some wild things I photographed this afternoon. This is almost a pictures-only post, except for one question. Do you recognize the plant in the first photo? I'm stumped.

Labels: butterflies, dragonflies, insects, rhexia, wildflowers

Sunday, July 06, 2008

The Butterfly Airport

Have you heard of the Fourth of July butterfly counts? I have my own undisciplined, unscientific version which consists of hanging around the Butterfly Airport (Verbena bonariensis) and watching.

OK that first picture was a moth, not a butterfly, but looks to me just like a plane taking off. I haven't been able to get a good photo of the larger scene with all the butterflies fluttering around the flowers - this is the best one.

In just a few minutes, I counted six species (maybe more; all those indistinguishable brown skippers!) - Black Swallowtail, Clouded Sulphur, Eastern Tailed Blue, Gray Hairstreak, Sachem?, and Cabbage White.

The flower in the middle picture above is Verbena hastata 'Pink Spires'. It's sort of a secondary airport for smaller butterflies.

Other butterflies seen over the weekend, but not on Verbena and not photographed, were Regal Fritillary, Common Buckeye, and some type of Crescent.