80AcresOnline

I mentioned back a few posts that May 23, the day of the weird beetle in the bathroom, had also produced a weird moth in the kitchen…and I forgot, until I was at BugGuide looking at some of my images to see if something “new” was really “old”, that May 23, also produced the pretty spot-winged fly on the skeleton plant flower.

Now that I have an ID for the moth, a Yellow-fringed Dolichomia, Dolichomia olinalis I think, though mine was larger than the typical size listed.

The contrast of the distinctly rosy-brown, glossy wings with their subtle patterns and the dull-yellow fringe is beautiful.    The larvae feed on oak trees, and since we have oak trees of several species, I’m fairly confident this moth is reproducing here.

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Besides the pretty pictures aspect (and I enjoy the pretty pictures, both taking them and seeing them online), photography has multiple uses that support wildlife and land management.  For instance…I’m almost at the pond and a weakly-flying near-dragonfly-sized insect flies up and lands on the underside of a small limb.   I can’t, with my eyesight, see it clearly.  I know it’s not a dragonfly, butterfly, or moth, but what is it?  If  I get too close it will fly away.

Enter the camera with a zoom lens:

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Actually not new today, but on May 23–which may, if the moth gets IDed soon, become a double-dot-day of two new species.

Anyway, meet Phileurus valgus L.

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Since it looks like the rain has left us for the summer (hope not, but the long-range predictions aren’t good), I’m posting flower pictures while we have some–and we have some.

An increaser in the west grass, mentioned before, is the Illinois Basketflower, Centaurea americana.  this tallish forb’s buds look a lot like thistles:

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Among everyone’s favorite wildlife (and insects) are butterflies.   The drought last year meant little for butterfly larvae to eat, and thus few butterflies early in the year (and those we had were markedly smaller than the previous year.)  But the rains over a month ago made it possible for some wanderers to lay eggs, and those eggs to survive, hatch, and the larvae to pupate…so now we have more butterflies.

I can’t get good pictures of the fast-flying species of sulfurs who are our dominant types,  nor did I catch the big tiger swallowtail in the back yard, but here’s some of what was flying (and cooperative about photography) in the past  week.

This Checkered White is trying to nectar on dogbane (the flowers mostly still in bud.)

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The half-inch of rain last weekend brought out a few more flowers, and today the theme was purple and yellow.  The most intense yellow belonged to the claspleaf coneflowers, damp-ground lovers, here in the swale below the #3 gabion.  The lacy white in the foreground bears the unlovely name of beggars’ ticks, for its adherent seeds.

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Though nearly all our land is used for wildlife,  we do have a vegetable garden.  Twenty-something years ago, we put in raised beds edged with landscape timbers.  Though some of those are rotting out, the main design is still there:

This is the garden from the east; the near bed had radishes in it and still has some carrots; to the right is a huge (HUGE) Mexican oregano plant from previous years.  We did not get the winter stuff in on time because of the severe drought and water use restrictions.  The next bed has corn on both ends and beans and sunflowers in the middle.

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We’ve all had the experience of visitors arriving just before, or just after, the best show of flowers/vegetables…the garden just isn’t looking its best the day they come, but it was right before (or after.)  We once spent a small fortune watering a patch of bluebonnets, trying to keep it in flower in a drought year for my husband’s aunt, who–when shown them–said “Is that all?  Why do people make a fuss over those?”

Well, we had houseguests this past week–late for one set of flowers and early for another–but the land graciously showed them something anyway:

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This is the season when all my plans for writing sensible, helpful, organized entries about this or that aspect of our project go blooey…because since we finally got some rain, the flowers (and their insect “friends”) are burgeoning and all I want to do is take pictures and say “Look!  Look at this one!”    For instance, stiff-stem prairie flax,  Linum berlandieri, gold from a distance, but up close decorated with delicate, precise lines of dark orange.

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I was out photographing wildflowers yesterday, after returning from the trip, and saw something I thought at first was an unfamiliar butterfly or moth, orange with black-tipped wings.  It flew oddly–more mothlike than butterfly-like, but not quite that, either.   Once it landed, I was able to get a first shot, then–slowly sneaking in,  and using the zoom–closer ones.

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