Time to clean out the things that I’ve been holding onto for too long. Well, it hasn’t been that long for these, really, I’ve just been neglecting to post them in a more timely manner. So let’s do them in order, shall we?
This is possibly a pearl crescent butterfly (Phyciodes tharos,) or it might be another of three or four more species that look remarkably similar but have trivial differences in markings, mostly on the underwings, which is something that makes giving the proper taxonomy for posts challenging sometimes. But let’s put it this way: I wouldn’t be the only one who made the mistake, and those who can tell the difference are likely used to it. The plant I can identify confidently, though: it’s a butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii,) even if there are countless cultivars for different colors, two of which we have, and you’ll see another in a little bit. I got lucky in being able to lean in close to this one before it spooked off or simply left in that manic way of theirs. The butterfly, I mean, not the bush, which is overall pretty mellow.
Just a nice dynamic pose from one of the adult Carolina anoles (Anolis carolinensis.) I’m fairly certain that I saw this particular one scarf down a pearl crescent just two days ago, too quickly for me to snag the camera. It’s a shame, because that’s the kind of behavior that I want to capture, on video preferably, but I’m mostly to blame in that I haven’t been staking them out like I should. Heat stroke has been a real possibility in making such attempts recently, though, and thus I’ll blame it on conditions instead…
I went down to the lake, oh, about eleven days ago, to see what could be found, and the answer was, not much – certainly nothing like the conditions from, damn, about two months back now. This osprey (Pandion haliaetus) was perched on a prominent branch and, while quite well aware of my presence, let me creep in fairly close as long as I was casual about it. The bird was disinclined to do any hunting, but its attention on the water told me that it was waiting for the right conditions.
It did eventually fly off, but while I was still remaining in my spot, and settled on a perch not too far away, and then as I was on my return leg around the lakeshore, I spooked it from there and it returned to the exact same perch, and so I backtracked slightly for another few frames, because really, there wasn’t a damn thing else going on.
Note the same position of the feet, too, indicating that this is a left-brained, creative type osprey rather than a right-brained analytical type. Okay, no it doesn’t, and that ‘left-brain/right-brain’ stuff isn’t a thing anyway, yet it did make me check the photo sequence to ensure that these weren’t taken at the same time, but no: 18 minutes apart, and you can see the difference in the sky and foreground pine needles anyway.
I did eventually capture one of the newborn Carolina anoles on a flower cluster of a butterfly bush, intending for a nice scale shot, but even to me it doesn’t carry the concept as well as I’d hoped, and of course if you’re not quite familiar with butterfly bush flowers you have no real idea anyway. If you’re looking at this on your smutphone, however (shame on you!), you’re probably pretty close to seeing this at life-size. Nose to tail-tip, the anole might have spanned just slightly more than your four fingers across.
This is the same eastern tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) from the month-end post, who was endeavoring to get every possible drop of nectar from the butterfly bushes, including this ‘black night’ variety – it returned many times during the day, and visited all three bushes. I’d had a hard time establishing the butterfly bushes in the yard here at Walkabout Estates, and finally called it quits this year and transplanted all of them into big pots, whereupon they exploded with growth – they really don’t like the natural soil conditions that we have. This means, however, that the greenhouse is going to be even more full in the winter, and I suspect I’ll be building another little one for the overflow. Sheesh.
You can never have too many bebby anoles, is what I always say (every morning upon rising,) and this one takes that to heart, not just by appearing here within the blogoblob but by appearing on the peach tree in the back forty, well away from the other two that I’m routinely tracking; in other words, this is a third newborn for this year. So far. The only thing we’re doing is providing lots of plants (and ‘exposure,’) but I guess it’s working. And here I didn’t think much of anyone was reading these posts, but it appears they’re popular somewhere. I’ll continue to do my part.