I woke this morning with the urge to make an audio recording of frog song. Nature seldom cooperates, when my plans are that specific, and today was no exception. Yesterday, one of the park’s small ponds was a cacophony of harsh croaks and lyrical trills. Today it was mostly silent. Here’s why:
So I have no audio to share. Instead I have sunlight and woodpeckers…
First Landing State Park is beginning to feel the onset of fall. The osprey are migrating, leaving egrets and herons in charge. Grasshoppers carry on as if winter will never come, but the butterflies know better. They’ve disappeared, along with most of the bees. (I did see something that might have been a bee, but it also might have been a fly that wanted me to think it was a bee.)
Despite these changes, summer hasn’t abandoned the park entirely. Mosquitoes still bite and squirrels still play. Crabs forage while frogs sing a frantic final chorus. Turtles patrol the shallow ponds, their backs mounded with mud so that they look like curiously mobile islands.
And the sun is still strong enough to burn if you stay out too long. Like I did today. But I have a good excuse for my over-long walk and uncomfortable sunburn. I was chasing a kingfisher…
Red Wing Park is one of my favorite places to visit when I crave a short walk. Or when I’m in the mood for butterflies. Yesterday, I discovered several new attractions, including lotus blooms in an artificial pond and a skink basking on the pond’s rock border.
Butterflies were out in droves, even a few species I have never seen before. (Add these to the Snowberry Clearwing Moths in yesterday’s post…)
I caught several images of a large, unfamiliar swallowtail. I can’t tell if these are Pipevine Swallowtails or Spicebush Swallowtails. Maybe both species were present? Any ideas?
One individual had a mangled hindwing, with more than half of the wing amputated. In marked contrast to the other butterflies, this one struggled in flight. It flailed and fluttered along in short spurts, stopping to perch on flowers rather than hovering as it drank. It continued to feed and flirt with its companions, but it was decidedly less agile.
As far as wing injuries go, this was as bad as I’ve seen. I felt an uncomfortable surge of empathy, and I couldn’t help but wonder if the wound was painful. The encounter has turned me philosophical.
It’s just a butterfly. An insect. An ephemeral creature, at best. And yet, its fate affected me. I am reminded of that jaded cliche about chaos theory, the one where a butterfly flaps its wings in one part of the world, causing an alteration in the weather pattern of another part of the world. What of this butterfly’s damaged wing? What currents of change might eddy in its wake?
Publication note: My poem “The Road” was published at vox poetica this week. It is now posted on the poemblog. Many thanks to editor Annmarie Lockhart!
I took a walk in Red Wing Park today, looking for butterflies. I found butterflies (there will be photos later), but I also found something I had never seen before. I believe these are Snowberry Clearwing Moths. (Which might be the same as a Bumblebee Moth?)
I was so excited, when I first noticed them, that I forgot my camera. And I’m pretty certain I was talking to myself. All alone, in the middle of a dappled path, mumbling things like “ooh how pretty” and “what odd bees” and, at last, “it’s definitely not a bee.”
Once I remembered my camera, it didn’t take long to realize that the moths moved too fast for me. They hovered to drink, never perching. A quick sip of nectar, then on to the next bloom. Most of my images could be labelled “a moth was here when I pressed the button, but flew away before the shutter clicked.”
I starting having success when I learned to focus on a clump of flowers and wait for a moth to zip into frame. This technique was a stretch for me, because I’m terrible at waiting. Perhaps, after today, I’ll be a tiny bit more patient with my life.
I’m tempted to wish for better photos, but the truth is that I’m lucky to have gotten any useful images at all. Most of my efforts look something like this:
The lotus garden near Sandbridge Beach is beginning to bloom. Today I stopped for a few minutes, trying to ignore the ridiculous heat and harsh midday glare.
Rae Spencer 