Rethought Green Lawn...What's Flowering Instead?

Several years ago we stopped mowing our lawn and incrementally started adding "wildflowers". For sure, this is not a pure/pristine restoration effort, i.e. this will never mirror a historic plant community. The objective is: a) propagate larval host plants for butterflies b) cultivate plant species known as key nectar sources for pollinators c) demonstrate/be-a-catalyst for rethinking the "green lawn".

Have had success in meeting objectives though the yard is still evolving/changing. Have been adding different native species (seeds) every year. Of course, this takes time and patience. This method is pure expectation and fun. I wonder what will take root and multiply. Will Monarchs appear at some point in time on the Showy Milkweed? Build It and They Will Come exampled butterfly usage a few years ago. Nothing like looking out the window and seeing some beautiful flowers (see below) at a minimum. Consider using a part of your lawn for ecology and beauty. Thank you :-)

Black-eyed Susan

Coneflower

Wild Flax

Paintbrush

Photographic Endeavors Do Not All End in Success

Sometimes certain plants, animals and weather do not cooperate with your photographic efforts. That was partially true today; had great backdrop of temperatures in the mid 60's with lots of sunshine. I went to one of my favorite places, Bass Creek National Recreation Area. It is great for a host of wildlife (birds, butterflies, fungi,wildflowers and lichen). Primary focus today was on early season butterflies with a backup plan of birds and wildflowers. Butterfly action was good, plenty to see and cooperative. First of year Western Pine Elfin recorded along with several Spring Azure, Green Comma, Hoary Comma and Mourning Cloak.

Ah yes, then the photo nemesis, the darting/never landing Sara Orangetip (Anthocharis sara); it blasted by me until the third encounter. I ran after it (on gravel road as opposed to the uphill scramble of last week...still breathing hard :-) and it landed on one of the two Prairie Star (Lithophragma sp.) wildflower species. The slightest breeze and this diminutive plant sways. I stopped a distance away and shot a multitude of photos prioritized on shutter speed. From the "best four" I created an animated GIF for your viewing enjoyment:

Sara Orangetip (Anthocharis sara)

Yep, they are all out-of-focus :-) No worries I have a couple of shots from a couple years ago to show you how stunning these critters are (below). Now, you can understand how easy it is to chase after this species...it is just very cool looking!

Nectaring for a brief period

Butterfly Watching...Pick the Right Habitat for the Season

Bass Creek National Recreation Area (mature Ponderosa Pine habitat) is a premier butterfly watching late winter, spring and summer. Not so much late summer, early fall. Found only four species (9-15-14) of seven butterflies. Why? It might be lack of flowers (nectar) and moist soil (for uptake of minerals).

The grassland/Ponderosa Pine habitat immediate to my yard doesn't look like much. But embedded in the brown cured grasses is rabbitbrush (expanded blog treatment - http://goo.gl/IZVhxu), a nectar "well" for many butterfly species. Yesterday (9-14-14), under similar weather conditions as today, found seven species of butterfly comprising 25+ individuals. The photographic opportunity was...excellent (see below).

William Leach (2013) published Butterfly People An American Encounter with the Beauty of the World and summarized the butterfly naturalists of the 1800's: "...began their careers in this way, awash in the heat and smells of the meadows and forest, sensitive to something worth losing oneself in, worth knowing, worth a lifetime of vocational loyalty and reflection." That's how I feel, for sure not with their accomplishments though :-)

Try this activity... you will find it overlaps the many themes of history, culture, biology, ecology, research, exercise, critical thinking and learning to name a few.

Purplish Copper

Hoary Comma

Milbert's Tortoiseshell

Orange Sulphur

Painted Lady

Create a Great Butterfly Watching Experience...Discover Spreading Dogbane First

So what the heck is Spreading Dogbane (Apocynum androsaemifolium)? It is a perennial flowering plant related to Milkweed that grows between 10 and 40 inches in height. Fragrant, small, bell-shaped flowers hang downward from the apex of the plant. Meadows, forest openings, and ravines in disturbed or intact habitat are home. Distribution includes most of the country, avoiding the southeast and southern Great Plains. Extensive background information of the plant can be found at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and the Finger Lakes Native Plant Society websites.

Spreading Dogbane

This plant flowers at at time when many other wildflowers have bloomed and gone to seed. I touched on this topic, plant phenology, on my blog earlier this spring. Essentially, wildflowers adhere to a timetable that is very ephemeral in nature...for us that is. Plants main job is to reproduce, in the form of a seed or fruit. Pollinators, such as bees and butterflies are part of the fertilization process. Wildlife seems to have an innate intelligence concerning the where, when and how of food/resources. It is taking me a while to discover this. I know in early spring find sap wells for overwintering adult butterflies. As the season progresses my looking targets specific wildflowers and mud puddles:


When late summer and fall roll around, I'm checking out the blooming Rabbitbrush. I've been missing a plant(s) that is attractive to butterflies for mid to late summer...until six days ago. A mid-elevation Sapphire Mountain wildflower meadow was the destination for a Fritillary finding expedition. As I zig-zagged made my way up Sawmill Creek Road, spied a stand of flowering plants at the 3.5 mile mark:

Dogbane Location (red rectangle)

I stopped the car, nice pull off on switchback corner, and walked over to see if there was any activity. To my surprise it was teaming with butterflies, mostly Fritillary species. Took many still photos and video of the butterflies in action:

Perhaps Spreading Dogbane is in your area to make for a great butterfly watching experience. Or don't worry about this fact...go to your favorite forest preserve, nature center, wildlife refuge and make your own wildlife discoveries :-)

Blues Legend, Johnny Winter RIP

IMHO, one of the greatest live albums produced.

In celebration of life, here are other forms of the "Blues":

Arrowhead Blue

Boisduval Blue

Greenish Blue

Silvery Blue

First Skipper Species of the Year

Tried a new location for wildflowers (mid-elevation meadow [first photo below]) the other day and got a bonus...Common Branded Skipper (Hesperia comma). Skippers in the Hesperia genus look very similar and much of identification criteria revolve around the white chevrons (size, shape and location) on the underwing. This butterfly was not nectaring on any of the wildflowers present (photos below); simply perched on bare soil of trail. Bunchgrasses are the primary food source for larvae; definitely appropriate habitat for them here.

Habitat

Common Branded Skipper

Cushion Buckwheat

Silvery Groundsel

Found a second Skipper species, Long Dash (Polites mystic), nectaring on Lavendar at the Pollinator Garden of Lee Metcalf NWR. This species is also partial to grass, however it is on the wet/moist side of the spectrum. World of wildlife is waiting for your discovery...go outside and find some.

Long Dash

Butterfly and Wildflower Action Picks Up

Noted a blog posting from Northwest Butterflies alerting folks as to Painted Lady butterfly (Vanessa cardui) migrating into Washington. Sure enough found a couple by accident at Blue Mountain (Missoula, MT) nectaring on Heartleaf Arnica (Arnica cordifolia). Also using this 50 yard linear patch of flowers were Green Comma (Polygonia faunus) and Western Pine Elfin (Callophrys eryphon). Earlier, a Sulphur blew by me without stopping along with another species of Elfin. And yes the wildflower show is kicking in...really enjoying the stands of color from Shooting Stars and Glacier Lilies :-)

Painted Lady

Green Comma

Western Pine Elfin

Shooting Stars

Glacier Lily

Finding Early Season Butterflies

Several landscape features, independent of each other and many times overlooked by us, are very attractive for early spring gatherings of butterflies. They are poop, moist soil and tree sap. For overwintering adult butterfly species of the comma and tortoiseshell groups poop, moist soil and sap are all that is available for food. Yes, these organics are food of sorts. That's right, find these "microhabitats" within the broader habitat types of forest, grassland and prairie and you dramatically increase your chances of observing butterflies.

"Puddling" is the term describing butterfly activity at moist soil areas; essentially butterflies are taking in sodium and proteins. Jan Beck, Eva Muehlenberg and Konrad Fiedler (Mud-puddling behavior in tropical butterflies:in search of proteins or minerals? [Oecologia (1999) 119:140-148]) found that male butterflies do take in proteins in addition to sodium (needed for muscle activity) when puddling. Additionally, these substances are attached to the male spermatophore, considered a "nuptial gift", that in reality increases reproductive success!

Crescents on Moist Soil

Fritillary on Poop

Sap Wells

Orange Butterflies...Not Halloween Scary to Us, But...

Most of us know that Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) are "toxic/unpalatable" to birds because of chemicals their larval stage ingest from milkweed plants. These butterflies exhibit warning coloration in the form of bold orange and black striping; this mechanism is referred to as "aposematism". This term was coined by W.B. Poulter in 1890 in his book The Color of Animals. Aposematism isn't just about color; it can also be about smell (think skunk).
Dennis Hoffman in his Your Sensory Desktop essay in This Will Make You Smarter (edited by John Bronkman, Harper Perennial 2012) states: "Our perceptions are neither true nor false. Instead, our perception of space and time and objects-the fragrance of a rose, the tartness of a lemon-are all part of our "sensory desktop", which functions much like a computer desktop...A graphical desktop is a guide to adaptive behavior...The graphical desktop guides useful behavior and hides what is true but not useful...Grasping the distinction between utility and truth is therefore critical to understanding a major force that shapes our bodies, minds, and sensory experiences...This leads to the concept of  a sensory desktop. Our sensory experiences-such as vision, sound, taste, and touch-can be thought of as sensory desktops that have evolved to guide adaptive behavior, not report objective truths...Space, time, and objects might just be aspects of a sensory desktop specific to Homo sapiens. They might not be deep insights into objective truths, just convenient conventions that have evolved to allow us to survive in our niche. Our desktop is just our desktop."
So for your sensory desktop, below are a series of orange-colored butterflies. Some are truly "toxic/unpalatable", like the Viceroy (Limenitis archippus...absorbs chemicals from willow) and Western checkerspot species (genus Euphydryas...feed on plants of the Figwort family). Surprisingly, the literature (a cursory search of Google Scholar) doesn't have a lot of material on the spectrum of butterflies (are all butterflies somewhat "toxic/unpalatable" ?) i.e. specific species being truly aposematic or mimics. Find something good :-)

Colon Checkerspot (Euphydryas colon)

Northern Checkerspot (Chlosyne palla)

Viceroy (Limenitis archippus)

Edith's Checkerspot (Euphydryas editha)

Butterflying...Testimonial of Sorts

"Oh, this is the coolest," she said. "I'm loving it." So spoke Katy Duffy, National Park Service interpretive planner. These words described a recent butterfly count at Yellowstone captured by reporter Kristen Inbody as a news story. A testimonial of sorts, still the gist of the story recounts the diversity, challenge, strategy, adventure, ecology of butterflies. It is a well written account capturing a lot of do's/don'ts of butterfly watching. I could identify with many of the participants and experiences. The bottom line for me, beauty and wildlife adventure are all around us, one need not go to Yellowstone to experience it on a pristine basis. Just like the movie Field of Dreams, if you build it (flower garden and/or wet spot in your own yard), these animals will come to you cutting down on some of the challenge. Here's a video snippet of my recent field trips to give you an idea of the action and beauty awaiting you:


So go ahead and dip your toe in the water, you won't regret wildlife watching butterflies :-)

Finding Blue...On Many Levels

Hey, it is great to be alive especially with the color blue in mind. Found a mountain top site accessible by road a mere 25 miles from my front door! Target: wildflowers and butterflies on a beautiful summer day.

Maybe ELO, a Spotify embed, will get you in the mood. If not music, how about video context?



Here are some photos of Blue Copper (Lycaena heteronea), Melissa Blue (Plebejus melissa) and Boisduval's Blue (Plebejus icarioides) butterflies just below the peak in the video above:

Blue Copper

Melissa Blue

Boisduval's Blue

Hoping you are reading this on a blue Monday...or just another bluetiful day :-) Find something good.