Late season Monarch

I was pleasantly surprised today to find a monarch butterfly. 'Tis a bit late in the season, they all should be well south of here. Was a nice warm sunny day for this last week of October, although breezy. At least the big "weather bomb" that hit the midwest U.S., southern Ontario and southeast U.S. brushed by us last night, we just got a bit of rain and wind. Nevertheless we headed out to the lake to check on things, I had to paddle down the lake and open up the dam, water level was getting high again. I saw a few dozen meadowhawk dragonflies, the last dragonflies of the season that hang on until brutal cold and frost is finally too much for them. There was one big darner near the dumpster, flying too high and fast for me to get a bead on it. At the roadside pond painted turtles were basking on the logs. A water snake was curled up in the sun by the steps to the trailerpark area, until I came down and it wiggled away. Frogs were still numerous along the shoreline. I would have liked to have explored a bit this afternoon to see what else was still out and about but I was just too tired from lack of sleep last night and fighting the wind paddling down the lake. Seeing the monarch made my day. We were driving home and this big butterfly was winging along in front of us, I thought it was a mourning cloak until we got close and I saw the orange, so I stopped, grabbed my camera and leaped out of the truck to get a few shots. Was supposed to be clear tonight with "a few clouds", I had hoped to get out the camera and try some star trail shots, but those few clouds turned into dense overcast with a gale force wind. Hope my butterfly is holed up somewhere until it can flutter south.

Little green blobs

It somehow seems fitting that during the time that Comet Hartley sails through the sky someone on the nature list brought to our attention firefly larvae. While out trying to photograph the night sky, I "discovered" that we had several larvae on the ground down by the lake. Last night I tried to photograph them, this proved more challenging that I had thought. You need to set the tripod and macro lens near one that is consistently blinking so that you can focus on it. It took several minutes and some wet knees to get some mediocre shots, and then, as with all light objects in the dark, just got a blob. But some may interested in seeing what they look like so I'll post it here. This is much enlarged, in reality they are tiny green lights twinkling in the grass, as if to use their bioluminescence to reflect the very stars twinkling in the sky above, or even to celebrate the passage of a celestial body that looks similar in our eyes.

Comet Hartley for comparison.

Night shots

Had a beautiful clear night last night, but you can feel that it's getting into fall and winter, temps got down to just above freezing. I stood outside by the lake playing with the camera and barn door tracker for a couple hours until my fingers and toes started to hurt from the cold. It's soon going to be too cold to stand out there for any length of time, so I'm going to enjoy the view while I can. The first shot posted here is for a friend of mine who was smart enough to move to Arizona. He was lamenting that he's having to get used to the stars at that longitude/latitude, couldn't see the Big Dipper in the evenings. It's started to get low on the horizon here, managed to catch a shot as it was sinking towards the tree.

Second shot is a digital montage of 2 shots, one was taken with the barn door tracker to get the stars, the other was a star trails shot that kept the trees sharp. I love photoshop. I can see possibilities with this. I can also foresee more cold toes and fingers, it's supposed to be clear for the next couple of nights, I will no doubt be out again trying to get more similar shots while we're still here at the lake.

Comet Hartley

I finally "saw" the itsy-bitsy comet that is now whizzing through our solar system. I still can't find it with binoculars, but I put the camera on the tracker and pointed to where it's supposed to be and fired a few shots. The little green blob appeared in the image. Hopefully later this week it will get a bit brighter, and we shall continue to be blessed with clear skies.

Big ol' Toad

Rained all of today. This evening, just as it was getting dark, thought I'd bring in the night's supply of firewood, we have a small stack against the rockwall straight out the door, covered with a small tarp. There are some small stones to hold the tarp in place, I was grabbing them and setting them aside to pull the tarp back. When I grabbed for one of the "stones" I immediately realized the cold rubbery thing in my hand was not a rock. It was a big ol' toad, lovely specimen. I brought her inside for a better look, and to take a picture. I set her in a plastic tote while I brought in the firewood, in the few minutes it took she warmed up and got lively. I got the little camera and tipped her out onto the carpet by the door, then tried to herd her with my right hand onto my left. ("Her", had small ears.) Finally got her cornered, she had to climb onto my hand, then settled long enough to take some quick snaps. I was wanting to measure her but she'd have none of it, so I took her back out and set her back atop the tarp where I'd found her.

I'm having to watch my step when I come out the door, the green frogs are on the move, sometimes 2 or 3 on the walkway. Tanka sees them hopping and then tries to get his big nose on them, they just hop into the goutweed groundcover and hide behind the flowerpots. The peepers have been calling for over a week, there's one outside the window as I type this. It must be sitting somewhere at the side of the house but I haven't found it yet, when I open the door it quits calling.

Flying Squirrel

This afternoon Dad and I wandered into the woods off our lane to check on some dead trees that we'll be cutting for firewood. It started to rain, so we trotted back out again, and just before I got to the road I spotted this dead flying squirrel lying belly-up on the forest floor. It looks as though some predator got it, from the marks probably some bird of prey. We had been talking loudly back and forth and tramping along, not my usual try-to-be-quiet prowling and looking, so we didn't notice whay may have gotten the squirrel. I scooped it up to examine it back at the house, it wasn't warm as it should have been had it a fresh kill, felt more like it had been laying there a while, although when I set it upon a newspaper the fleas started to come off it, so it hadn't been there long. My "Mammals of Ontario" describes the northern flying squirrel's belly hairs as being gray at the base, as this one does, so I'm thinking it's a northern. Makes me sad to find one in this condition, they're beautiful little squirrels. I had a live one active near my cabin last summer, saw it land on the trunk of pine, and I could hear a soft *thump* on my cabin roof now and then before I went to sleep, no doubt one of them landing on its way to and from the big oak tree. We have 3 big oaks in a clump near the house, I should put a little feeder platform on one of the trunks and put a couple handfulls of sunflower seeds out after dark, see if I can attract some to where I can photograph them.

Caterpillars

August and September are good months for finding caterpillars, they're coming into the mature stage and fattening up for winter, either overwintering in their present state or more often going into cocoon. I spotted some red-humped oakworm caterpillars on the side of the laneway on a small oak tree (* my guidebook says they're almost identical to the white-headed prominent but even the expert writing the book has difficulty separating the two, so for the sake of ease I'll refer to these as oakworm.)

Caterpillars are far too often overlooked, many of our species can be quite beautiful, sporting bright colours and lovely patterns.

Among my favourites are the tussock moth caterpillars, like this hickory tussock. They're like soft furry little teddy bears, silky to the touch, not spiky and in some cases stinging like the io moth caterpillar. I grabbed an io caterpillar once by mistake when picking up some leaves, the tips of my fingers were numb for a couple of days.

Couple others that I've found and have had time to photograph are this green and yellow striped black arches moth, and an orange with black headed caterpillar found on red oak, as yet unidentified. Looking at the pic of the orange caterpillar I'm seeing the "stitchery" of some critter that glued leaves together with web, I've been meaning to investigate that further, haven't gotten around to that yet.