Back in July -- Blue Jays, Purple Flowers, and Hummingbird Moth

Way back in July, (it wasn't really that long ago was it?) all the bluejays in the neighborhood descended on the feeders at once.  There were at least 15, and can they raise a real ruckus!  Most were this year's fledglings mixed in with a few of their older sibs and, of course, their parents.  If you look carefully, you can see 8 of them in the photo below.

Too lazy to take their own seeds from the feeders, these 2 juvies were begging for food while the adult seems to throw its wings up in defeat.  I hope those 2 can manage for themselves now that the cold weather is on its way. 

 Along the river back in July were lots of wildflowers including these lovely purple ones.  I think they are a vetch of some sort, but I am not really sure. 

 Nearby in some lavendar colored flowers was this fantastic hummingbird moth (Hemaris diffinis).

 

It is also called a clearwing moth because it loses most of the scales from its wings soon after it emerges.

 

By now it has surely laid its eggs, or fertilized some eggs, as the case may be, in time for the larvae to over-winter in cocoons.  Somehow the summer went by far too quickly ...

The Winery in Autumn and Zelus (again)

We spent a large part of the afternoon at a nearby winery.  But before I write about that, there are a few shots I took in the yard this morning that I want to show you.  The last (probably, anyway) lupine flower is a bright spot in the front flower bed when most other flowers are history.  And I found the very same Zelus assassin bug nymph is still on the very same oak leaf!  Even after we had almost 2 inches of rain in less than 2 hours and lots of wind the other night.  Once again it posed obligingly for me, giving good views of its pointed rostrum and red eyes.  I was also surprised to see a fairly fresh looking red admiral flitting around in the cool morning sunshine.

But signs of autumn are all around us.  The milkweed is beginning to disperse its seed.  I love the silky shininess of the hairs that keep the seeds aloft when the wind blows them.  The bright red leaves are on a euonymous that I just planted last week in front of the house.  Soon the whole bush will be afire.  Along the country roads leading to the winery we spotted the fall asters blooming next to red sumac, golden rod, and what looked like brown-eyed susans.

We visited the winery (Salem Glen Vineyard) with some friends.  The vineyard is barely 4 miles from our house.  This is the first time we have been there, but it will not be the last.  We had a wine tasting and enjoyed them all, even bought a few bottles to take home with us!  Below is a picture I took from the deck at the tasting room.  A few of their vines are in front of a small observatory.

We came back to our house and had more wine with a variety of cheeses, olives, pears, apples, out on our patio; a great way to spend an autumn afternoon.

Assassin Bug Nymph – Zelus spp.

I spotted this little fellow on the underside of an oak leaf.  This is a nymph of an assassin bug in the genus Zelus.  If you look closely at the largest picture in the collage below you can see a feeding tube called a rostrum tucked under its head.  It uses the rotrum to puncture the body of its prey and inject saliva that contains enzymes to kill the prey and liquify the innards so it can suck it out.  That brings a new image of "feeding tube" to mind!

While taking these photos, a red squirrel in a walnut tree began fussing incessantly.   

It kept a close eye on me and the cats (Max and a neighbor's cat that we call TK) as we made our rounds. No way we were going to be able to sneak up on anything.

Not too far from the red squirrel and the assassin bug is the flower bed with the hollyhocks.  The 6 feet tall hollyhocks have been blooming all summer.  Their white and yellow flowers are not particularly large or striking  but they do have a certain charm.  At least the deer think so, and unless I spray a deterent on them, they never get a chance to flower.  I think the deer like the flower buds best of all.   The hollyhocks are also favorites of the bees and bumblebees.  And it sure looks like the bees do a good job of pollinating them; just look at the lovely seed heads!

 

With all of those seeds, the deer should have plenty of flower buds to snack on next year.

More Moonflower

For this followup to yesterday's post on moonflowers, I took more pitcures during the day today as they succumbed to the sunlight.  One of the first signs is visible in the top lefthand photo in the collage below - a tear along the fusion line between petals.  As the day wore on, the petals began to sag against the ribs (bottom right).  This vine is in shade most of the day, so the flowers seem to take several days to dry up, but eventually they do dry.  In their native habitat, they attract moths as pollinators, but even though I saw a moth flying around one this evening, I am not sure if the right moth is around to pollinate them at this latitude.  I am hoping for some seeds.

More flowers were set to open this evening and I was able to take photographs as the sun disappeared behind the hill to the west.  As expected, the first flower to start opening was on shady side of the trellis at 4:45 pm.

An hour later, it had opened even more.

And more still in another 30 minutes.  You can see the last rays of sunlight in the background on the hills across our little valley.

Meanwhile, on the sunnier side of the trellis, the buds are just beginning to unfurl.  I really like this shot because you can see the flower that is opening, two tightly furled buds, yesterday's dried up flower, and buds that are still held within the funky pointy purple sepals.

 

Finally, Keith from Holdingmoments commented on yesterday's post that moths must be attracted to this flower.  He is correct, but this earwig is the only bug that I have seen here in Minnesota that might be pollinating the flower.  I hope the earwig does the trick!

A Quick Post

This is only a quick post today.  It was a rough week at work with way too many long days trying to meet a deadline.  I didn't take a single photo all week.  I took a few this morning while taking a stroll around the yard to see what has been going on while I wasn't looking.  First up is this red and black Large Milkweed Bug, Oncopeltus fasciatus.  I had noticed these bugs earlier in the summer all over the milkweed plants; most recently it was mating pairs that seemed to be everywhere on the milkweed.  Just like the monarch butterfly caterpilars, they store the toxins from the milkweed that they eat and advertise that fact in their red/orange and black coloring to deter predation.  It seems to work because there are lots of them!

 

I never saw any eggs, but did find several clusters of the newly hatched young on a number of milkweed seed pods today.  This is the first year I have noticed these bugs.

In the spring, we planted some annual vines to grow on the trellis that has gotten a little too shady for the clematis.  This is called moonflower (Ipomea alba).  The closed flower buds look like a little green unicorn horn the way it is twisted.

 

The flower opens only at night and you can see in the photo below that bud has untwisted, unfurling the fused, white petals.

They quickly open all the way and release a fantastic jasmine-like perfume.  The flowers are huge - about 7 inches across. 

I took these pictures tonight; tomorrow morning, when the sun hits them, they will wilt almost immediately and turn brown.

September Saturday in the Garden

There is quite a bit of activity in the garden these days.  Large numbers of birds (gold finches, house finches, starlings, and more) are passing through and the year round residents are trying to fatten up for winter.  The collage below is of one of the many male juvie downy woodpeckers that were from at least 2 different families nesting in the woods behind our house.  He is showing off his red crown while trying to decide between the humminbird nectar or the suet block.  Hmmm.  Why not have some of each?

Another comma butterfly was seen too.  Or could this really be a question mark? Can someone help with the ID? It spent a long time getting moisture from a bit of dead wood and sunned for a while on a hosta leaf, letting me get very close for these photos even though I was not able to position myself for a better angle. 

Hummingbirds are also passing through in large numbers.  The ones that spent summer here are very territorial and try to protect "their" feeders from the new arrivals.  I even saw one chase off a dragonfly that wandered too close to the feeder.  The dragon was bigger than the hummer!  The hummingbirds have what we call "hummer wars" where they chase each other all around the garden and through the tree branches.  It reminds me of the chase scene in the first Star Wars movie.

 

Hope you have enjoyed your weekend too.

Pleasant Surprises in the Garden (or "Frog and Butterfly" for you Heart fans)

There were no frog spawn or tadpoles in the garden pond this spring and summer, probably because our winter had been so cold that the frogs didn't survive.  So I was delighted to see an adult frog in the pond last weekend. 

 

I was able to take some pictures of it sunning on the partially submerged bridge that I have in the pond.

This a very nice sized leopard frog with great markings.  When I got too close, it dove down into the muck at the bottom of the pond. 

It probably uses this tactic to avoid being eaten by the raccooons that sort through the algae for nummies like dragonfly larvae and unsuspecting frogs. Almost every morning I find clumps of algae pulled out of the water by the raccoons. We gave up years ago on trying to keep aquatic plants; the raccoons are convinced we get the plants just for their benefit ...

The other pleasant surprise was something I have never seen before (except in other blogs) - a comma butterfly!  This one was sitting momentarily on one of our patio chairs.  I was't able to get a shot with the wings open, but I was thrilled to even get this shot.

Hope your garden surprises are also pleasant.

Purple Coneflowers and Butterflies

Butterflies love purple coneflowers.  In an earlier post I had photos of the Eastern Yellow Swallowtail Butterfly on coneflowers and mentioned that sometimes one can find females that are dark brown instead of yellow.  That is what crossed my mind when I saw this butterfly.  But this one turns out to be a male Black Swallowtail, Papilio polyxenes. 

He is a little worse for the wear and is missing most of his tails; you can just see a bit of the left tail in the photo below. You can also get a glimpse of the underside of his wings showing the characteristic orange and blue pattern of this species.

This bumblebee tried to chase the meadow fritillary, Boloria bellona, away, but the fritillary held fast.  That must have been one tasty flower!

 

 

It seems to be missing part of its right hindmost leg.

This is the first time I have noticed the lovely common buckeye, Junonia coenia, in our garden.

It has 6 eyes visible on the top side of the wings.

The 6 eyes and the 4 orange bars make for a very handsome butterfly.

The purple conflowers attract many other insects and I have even seen a hummingbird feeding at the flowers.  Even after the flower is gone, the seed heads attract quite a few birds.  Hard to go wrong when you have purple coneflower in your garden!

Grackle and Woodpecker

Back in July, we had a lovely male grackle visit the bird feeders.  Although grackles are fairly common around here, they don't spend much time at feeders.  The light was really catching the blue and purple iridescence in this fellows feathers.

 

It joined a juvenile red-bellied woodpecker at the feeder for a bit. 

But the combined weight of the birds stretched the spring mechanism of the feeder so that the seed access holes were not aligned and neither bird could get to the seeds.  This is a pretty effective an anti-squirrel device.

 
Once the grackle left, the woodpecker could get to the seeds again.

Summer Garden

July was a great month for our garden.  We had asiatic lilies and bee balm in a bed behind the garage.

The beds and pots around the patio created a colorful, partially shady refuge from the heat and sun.  We have eaten many dinners out here.

The daylilies made their display at the very front just next to the cul-de-sac; a wonderful welcome home greeting after a day at work.

Here is one of many monarch butterfly caterpillars eating its way to winged freedom.

 

It has been a glorious summer.