It's Hatched!

Eight days ago, a regal moth laid her egg on my hand.  We brought it in and put it in a jar.  We looked it up to find out how long it would be until it hatched, and then what it would eat.  The experts said the egg would hatch in seven to ten days.  

Yesterday was day seven.  The egg had a dark spot on it.  I went out and grabbed a hickory leaf and we placed leaf and egg into a larger container.

This morning I came in about 10:00.  The egg was all black.  I looked at it again about 12:30 - the egg was empty.

 

It had hatched!  Over on another leaflet, there was the baby hickory horn devil!  And what a baby it is - check it out:

  Look at all those spines and things! 

And here it is with my finger in the background...just to give you an idea of scale.  It is maybe 6mm long.

If you take your motion sickness tablets, you can watch the video of it's first steps in the sunshine:

It hasn't taken even a tiny nibble from the leaf we gave it.  So we added a fresher leaf and a leaf of another hickory species.  We don't know which one it will prefer, but whatever it first snacks on, that will be the one we will have to keep feeding it.

 I will keep posting the progress of our little friend, either here or on the Dahlem blog:  Dirt Time at Dahlem.

Regal Moth

Camp was just winding up and the camp director pointed out to me "there's a moth flopping on the ground."  And sure enough, there it was - a regal moth.

 Regal moths are in the silk moth clan - note the very large furry body (this photo is not mine...it is from Dave Smith's blog "ylmb25").  How large is it?  Well the wing span is larger than my hand, and the body was as big as my thumb (I have chubby thumbs).  

Well, of course, I had to go and pick it up.  It was fluttering and flapping, but all that effort was not resulting in any flying.  I figured it must be injured, so I placed my hand in front of it and up it crawled.

Poor thing was missing it's left front foot (which I later discovered was recent, because the camp director had taken its photo earlier and it was fully footed).  Well, it scrambled and fluttered and refused to sit still on my hand.  I had no camera with me, so I couldn't get any pics of my own.  It climbed on my shirt, then back on my hand, and while "sitting" there in a complete state of agitation, it left a small white blob on my hand.

  

Now, normally, you'd be thinking "oooo - it poo'd on my hand," right?  But no - it's an egg!  I had a gravid female!  

She fluttered some more and then, pfffttt, suddenly she was airborn!  Up she went to the edge of the pavilion roof, and dropped another egg.  Then she fluttered up to a hickory tree and we can only presume she laid a few more eggs on the undersides of a few leaves.  And then she was off again, like a very ungainly bird, flapping across the trail and into the tangle.

I've brought the egg inside - we are going to see if we can raise it.  But how long will it be before it hatches?  And what will it eat?  Research!!!

The regal moth, aka the Royal Walnut Moth (Citheronia regalis), is the largest of the silk moths, going by mass (think weight), in North America.   You many know it better in its larval form:  the hickory horn devil (read my post about these here).   They lay their eggs in groups of one to four on the undersides of preferred host plant leaves, like hickories and walnuts (being neither of these, it must just be she had to "go" while in my hand and I got a deposit).  In 7 to 10 days we can expect the egg to hatch...and then we've got to feed it.

Stay tuned...

A Day in the Field - Queensbury

Is there a better way to spend a day off than going into the field with a good friend? Today I met up with Jackie to walk the bike trail (formerly a train track) near Glen Lake in Queensbury. She was going to show me some "life" flowers to add to my list.

The biggie, of course, was this splendid orchid: the yellow ladies slipper (Cypripedium claceolus):

It just makes you sigh to see it, doesn't it? There were several of these, blooming right alongside the road. It is hard to believe that a) they are there, and b) they are still there! What a treat - and how lucky we are that she discovered them the other day when driving by.

We parked by the bike path and I was immediately drawn to this large flowering shrub. I thought at first it was a mock orange, but Jackie informed me that it is a variety of spirea. Up close, the flowers are wonderfully delicate:

Another life flower for me was this strange-looking thing: gaywings, or fringed polygala (Polygala paucifolia). It reminds me of some odd little creature, rather than a flower. They are quite tiny, and most were past their prime, but whole swathes of slope along the path were covered with them.

Another perennial favorite is wild columbine (Aquilegia canadensis). So many columbines we see are horticultural varieties, but I think the wild ones are the prettiest.

Especially if you lift them up and peek at their bloomers!

Another target species for me was the glaucous honeysuckle (Lonicera dioica). Most of the flowers were past their prime, but the color is still delicious.

And apparently this hummingbird moth thought the flowers were delicious, too, for it was hovering around and sampling as many blossoms as it could. It didn't want to stay in one place for long, though, so it was difficult to photograph. This image caught the coiled up tongue:

And here it is getting a meal:

A lovely view of its back and those wonderful clear wings:

When looked at head-on, the honeysuckle almost looks like a green plate filled with a colorful salad! No wonder the moth was attracted to it.

Carrion flower (Smilax herbacea)was another interesting find. The stem was this lovely purple-black, bruise-like color, with a bit of a whitish bloom to it. The flower itself, which wasn't quite open yet, looked like a bunch of little broccoli florets with long whiskers!

I had to have Jackie stand in front of this large shrub. Can you guess what it is? This is burning bush (Euonymus atropurpureus) - aka: wahoo. Yes, the same as the nurseries sell you because it has beautiful flame red leaves in the fall. But it is an invasive - and when it gets loose, this is what it does. I have two left at home that I need to rip out...along with the last Japanese barberry (another awful invasive).

This is a very small flower: hoooked crowfoot (Ranunculus recurvatus). Another new one for me. As you can see, the flowers are winding up their blooming season.

And why is it called "hooked" crowfoot? Take a look at the center of the flower - it looks just like a burdock burr.

Miterwort (Mitela diphylla) was in bloom. It looks a lot like foamflower, but scrawy by comparison (the flower head of foamflower is much more compact). But, if you look at each little flower up close, it looks like a tiny little snowflake:

Near the profusion of gaywings, we had a gorgeous mountain azalea (Rhododendron roseum) in bloom. I had to use a flash to capture the beauty of its flowers.

And here we have another target plant: nodding trillium (Trillium recurvatum). Nodding trillium is a plant that NYS botanists are trying to map throughout the state because it is very difficult to find, mostly because it is disappearing. Jackie has located two or three colonies of this now rare plant - a great find for her, for me, for the state botanists.

Now, I am quick to judge when it comes to plants. I saw this and said to Jackie - oh, sessile-leaved bellworts. I was surprised to see them because even in Newcomb they are reaching the end of their season. But, Jackie informed me that these were not sessile-leaved bellworts. They are, in fact, bellworts of the perfoliate type (Uvula perfoliata); note how the leaf completely surrounds the stem (or looks like the stem perforates the leaf). Another new plant for my life list.

Red baneberry (Actaea rubra)- the only one we saw. When those flowers ripen into fruit, they will be red. Popular with wildlife, this is not a plant we should eat (note the name: BANEberry).

Here we have another VERY TINY plant. I meant WEENIE! How Jackie saw them, I'll never know. This is thyme-leaved sandwort (Arenaria serpyllifolia). Another new species for me. I wonder how many of these little plants I have encountered in my life without ever knowning it.
It is a non-native species, but not one that seems to be taking over our country, like garlic mustard. Sandworts, as their name suggests, like dry, sandy soils, which is why we were finding them in the shoulder along the path.

Flowers weren't all we saw! We encountered two large toads. Of course we had to have a photo session. The toad, we believe it was a female, was released unharmed.

Further along the bike path we stopped at a wonderful little wetland. A bird was singing and singing away, with a song neither of us recognized. And then we saw it: a gorgeous male oriole. There were actually several in the area, each calling and marking his territory.

We tracked this one down in a staghorn sumac and took many shots while he preened his feathers.

Absoloutely no privacy!

Many other birds were calling and flying around. This yellow warbler (sweet sweet sweet I'm so sweet) was singing away on the far side of the sumac.

Sadly, I had to leave - groceries to buy and a dog to get home to! But we made plans to meet the next day and visit the Ice Meadows north of Warrensburg. Stay posted for photos of that trip next.

Beautiful Moths

Toby made a great find this morning. We were on the third leg of our morning walk when suddenly the ol' pooch perked up and made a beeline to the roadside. There in the grass, barely moving, was a lovely cecropia moth. I picked it up and set it on my shirt - a beautiful living brooch. As we continued our walk, the moth started to shiver and shake - no doubt trying to warm up after a cool night. I noticed that its left hindwing had a tear, but otherwise it looked fine. When I got home, I set it in a box where it would have a quiet, dark, secure place to sit until I got to work. Suddenly it was active - must've warmed up. I could hear all sorts of scratchings and flutterings from inside the box. After about ten minutes it was quiet again. When I got to work, I grabbed the camera and the box and went outside for a photo shoot.

As you can see, the cecropia, which is one of the silk moths, is a large insect.

How beautiful it is with that large, striped furry body!

The large feathery antennae indicate that this is a male. With the silk moths, the males emerge before the females, so they are rarin' to go when the females come out. Like many other moths, he doesn't have functional mouthparts, so he won't be eating. Instead he'll live off his fat reserves, hopefully finding many females with which to mate before the fat supply is gone.

I couldn't resist getting a close-up of the wing - the colors are just stunning.

Next we have a polyphemus, which we found a couple days ago. This male has obviously seen better days:
It was still alive, but the ants were already trying to make off with it. So, I picked it up, blew off the ants, and took it home, where I stuck it in the freezer. This is the humane way to quickly end a moth's life. Like the cecropia above, this is a male - note the large, feathery antennae.

The centers of the wings' eye spots have lost their scales and are transparent. Moths have these eye spots to help deflect the attention of predators. Hopefully the potential predator sees the eye spots and thinks it is looking at something else entirely, like an owl, for example, and leaves the moth alone.

Luna moths, another of our native silk moths, also have eye spots, but the ones on the forewings are small. I found this wing back in early May. It is in pristine condition, except for the fact that it is no longer attached to the moth. "Luna moth green" is one of my absolute favorite colors.

According to my friend Lydia, who is the moth and butterfly guru at the Paul Smiths VIC, we should be starting to see the females silk moths fairly soon. Their antennae are not large and feathery, so you can easily tell them apart from the males. Lydia says that if you find a female silk moth, the odds are very good that she is gravid - heavy with eggs. While it is possible for you to raise her young, if she is not injured you should let her go and complete her life, laying her eggs on the appropriate host plant(s).

If she is lightly injured (say with a torn wing like the cecropia here), you can place her gently in a paper bag, close the top, and set it aside in a quiet place. She will lay her eggs within the bag before she dies. The eggs should hatch about 12 days later (sooner if it is warm). You will then have a bunch of silkworms to raise; be sure you know what species you have so you can provide the right food for them. After they grow up and pupate, you can release the adults to continue their species's survival in the wild.

The Inscrutable Sphinx

Hannah came in this morning with a nice moth photo for us:



We feel this is a Small-eyed Sphinx (Paonias myops), which is a fairly common moth. According to the field guides, this moth prefers cherry trees, which we have in abundance. It will also eat birches, hawthorns, poplars, other members of the Prunus genus, and willows, all of which are also a dime a dozen in these parts. These are, of course, host plants for the larvae, for the adults have no mouths. Like many lepidopterans, they live just a few days and exist for one purpose only: mating. The female attracts the male using airborne pheremones. Eggs are laid on the host plant(s), where they hatch and the larvae feed. When it comes time to pupate, they head underground.


So head outside and keep your eyes peeled. From now until the snow flies (hopefully not again until fall), things will be happenin', and you just never know what you will encounter if you look!

Luna Legacy

Yesterday evening while on our walk down to the Hudson River, I found the right hind wing of a luna moth in the weeds along the roadside. No other evidence of the insect was about. A bat's late night meal?


I brought it home so I could include it here with a photo because what struck me about this wing is how furry it is:




What is the purpose of this furriness? Does it, like the furry hairs on early plants like coltsfoot, help it keep warm? I don't know. I'm still looking for information.



Meanwhile, here is some background info. about the luna moth:

• The luna (Actias luna) is a Saturniid moth.


• The adults live for only about a week and have no mouth parts (in other words, they don't eat - that could explain the short life span as an adult).


• Up in the northern part of its range (Canada), the luna only produces one generation a year, while in NY and NJ (and similar latitudes) it produces up to two, the first adults generally appearing around April and May, and the second generation 9-11 weeks later.


• The larvae are usually listed as feeding on hickory and walnut leaves, but this gave me pause since we don't have those here. As it turns out, they also eat birch, alder and sumac, all of which grow up here in the mountains.

Other recent sightings:

Last night I saw my first fireflies of the season. Actually, it may have been only one firefly. Still, it was the first of the season.

Last Thursday (11th) evening, along the same route to the Hudson, we encountered two snapping turtles digging nests and one wood turtle. I used to see several wood turtles along this stretch of road in early June, all digging nests and laying eggs, but a couple years ago they paved the sandy turn-around and this has severely limited potential nest sites.

The latest bloomers include marshmallow (Althaea officinalis), sow thistle (Sonchus olaraceus - a non-native with aggressive tendencies), blackberries (Rubus alleghaniensis), yarrow (Achillea millefolium - also non-native, but naturalized), purple vetch (Vicia americana) - all your common "roadside weeds." My favorite is birdsfoot trefoil (Lotus cornicalatus), another non-native currently in bloom; I love it for its stunning yellow color.

The wild strawberries (Fragaria virginiana) are starting to fruit now - I saw the first ripe ones along the roadside this morning.