HollerPhenology

I'm seeing indigo buntings more often at my end of the holler this year

The first indigo bunting that I saw in the holler this year was a female that landed on some old milkweed stems in my planter garden.

Indigo bunting (Passerina cyanea) female, April 26, 2022  [Photo: Cathie Bird]

A few days later, I started seeing a male. He came back almost everyday in late afternoon, but I never caught sight of another female.

Indigo bunting (Passerina cyanea) male, April 30, 2022  [Photo: Cathie Bird]

Adult indigo bunting (male) with a seed he found. June 26, 2022  [Photo: Cathie Bird]

On June 29th, I thought I spotted another adult female. A short time later, a male indigo bunting joined this bird and they foraged in the grass together. After a few minutes observing them, I noticed that the first bird was just kind of following the male around, occasionally opening its bill wide. When I got a good look through binoculars, it was clear that the bill I was seeing was that of a fledgling.

Adult indigo bunting dad introduces a fledgling to the planter garden and feeding areas of the yard, June 29, 2022  [Photo: Cathie Bird]

On that visit, the dad and his fledgling stayed in the taller grass at the edge of the yard. It was difficult to get a good photo.

Dad and fledgling return to forage on June 30, 2022.  [Photo: Cathie Bird]

The following day, however, the dad and fledgling returned and foraged in more open areas of the yard. I was able to get a photo of the fledgling getting a seed or two on its own as well as taking food offered by the parent.

Indigo fledgling finds some seeds on its own, June 30, 2022  [Photo: Cathie Bird]

The parent and fledgling continued to forage together every day for awhile. The young bird would often get here first, and some days -- for example, on July 4th -- it came several times without the parent.

Fledgling on the 4th of July, foraging on its own.  [Photo: Cathie Bird]

The fledgling on a white oak branch, July 4, 2022.  [Photo: Cathie Bird]

I haven't seen the younger bird now for several days, but an adult male indigo bunting has been here several times, usually early morning and late afternoon. This year was the first time I'd seen and identified an indigo bunting fledgling. I'm still hearing indigo songs out in the woods near the house and down in the flatter parts of the holler and my neighbors' fields.

Louisiana Waterthrush in the holler

A little more than a year ago I saw my first Louisiana waterthrush. It was grooming its feathers on a branch, easily identifiable with binoculars and almost beyond reach of the camera lens I was using at the time. I felt lucky to get any kind of usable image.

Louisiana waterthrush (Parkesia motacilla) on June 11, 2021. [Photo: Cathie Bird]

After my first sighting, I looked this species up at Birds of the World -- something I like to do for any bird I find in the holler -- to predict what my chances of seeing more of them might be.

Pretty much centered in the breeding range for Louisiana waterthrushes, the holler's natural features match a majority of those where these birds more frequently breed. It's hilly with closed-canopy mixed deciduous and evergreen forest, and has two high to medium gradient headwater streams running through it. Neither stream could be classified "perennial" but, in most years I've lived here, they'd have had plenty of water flowing during the waterthrush's peak breeding season. Not an exact match, but I thought I had a good chance of seeing them again.

Louisiana waterthrush, June 28, 2022. [Photo: Cathie Bird]

Just a few days ago, I caught sight of one searching at the edge of the woods beyond my driveway and hanging around my planter garden, hunting and catching insects.

Louisiana waterthrush with an insect it caught, June 28, 2022. [Photo: Cathie Bird]

Prior to this sighting, my Merlin app had suggested one might be around but I was unable to match my recording to any of the typical songs/calls. I've now seen and heard its calls every day since I saw it on June 28th. It's interesting to me that its appearance near the house coincided with a stretch of really dry weather during which the flow of both streams had slowed considerably, so I'm wondering if that's why it came in closer or if it was just branching out a bit.

Louisiana waterthrush near the planter garden yesterday, July 3, 2022. [Photo: Cathie Bird]

Good photos of this individual have been hard to get. It seemed shy at first and would scurry for cover if it saw me at my bird-watch window. Now that it's coming closer, my imaging difficulties relate more to its speedy foraging style -- lots of blurry pictures to weed out.

Such an interesting bird. Makes me happy to hear and see it around the holler.

Purple finch in the holler today!

[Photo: Cathie Bird, March 13, 2021]

Watching for migrating birds in the spring (and fall!) is such fun. In my last post I featured the first returnee to the holler, a pine warbler. This morning another migrator flew in: a male purple finch! He is the first of his kind that I've seen in the holler since I moved here, though I used to see purple, house and Cassin's finches quite often when I lived in Colorado. Such a pleasant surprise to see one again.

[Photo: Cathie Bird on March 13, 2021]

[Photo: Cathie Bird, March 13, 2021]

 

 

What's new in the holler and for HollerPhenology

"Yellow Warbler" -- the first assignment for my new nature journal. [Photo: Cathie Bird]

Following my decision to "hole up" in the holler around March 2nd, I signed up for the online nature journaling and field sketching course at Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Bird Academy. I have taken other courses there to expand knowledge and sharpen skills for my phenology observation activities on Nature's Notebook -- identifying bird songs and understanding bird behavior, for example.

I didn't anticipate how my work on this course might influence content here on HollerPhenology until I finished the first assignment which was -- prior to any instruction in how to sketch -- to draw a yellow warbler, then think about what advantages drawings have over photos and vice versa. These questions dropped me into the center of future intentions for posts on HollerPhenology.

I have relied, primarily, on my own photos to add visual illustrations of what's happening with life cycles of wild things where I live. Before I put them into a post, however, I often use my photos to validate what I thought I saw. Since images are time-stamped, they serve to back up memory chronology as well. Photos of one individual or colony over several years can document changes in the "neighborhood" of a certain plant that I might not remember.

Sketching the yellow warbler took me into a different (and unexpected) space, a deeper and possibly more intimate one with the species I observe. I want to explore this experience further. Every once in awhile, I want to toss a sketch instead of a photo into my posts, or maybe both, side by side.

Another thing I want to do with HollerPhenology will involve shorter posts published (I hope!) more often. The need to limit excursions beyond the holler in these days of the coronvirus may help inspire me to anchor this new habit.

I guess it's spring now.

Amur honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii) leaves on March 12, 2019. [Photo: Cathie Bird]

I'm going to start this post with an ecopsychological observation as well as a phenological one. This past January 8th, I sensed (rather than saw) a fluttering outside my study window, and turned just in time to see an eastern comma flapping -- somewhat frantically, I thought -- against the glass.

Granted, commas are often the first butterfly species I see every year. But not in January. I felt little joy in seeing it. It was way too early. With some urgency I wondered if I was missing new phenophases of other species I observe in the holler. I often reduce the frequency of holler walks in the winter months. Physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually for me, it was still winter. I did not feel ready for it to be spring. And if there were things popping up and out already, I had concerns for the consequences to each and every one of them.

Multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora) on March 10, 2019. [Photo: Cathie Bird]

As calendar-winter went on -- with continued warm spells punctuated by serious cold ones, and more rain, more often than I have ever seen since I moved to Tennessee -- I noted that no trees, shrubs or forbs were taking the bait. My quince bushes eventually began to produce small flower buds, but they didn't swell or open, and endured a few 9- and 10-degree lows very well. By mid-February, daffodils were up and flowering throughout the larger Terry Creek drainage to which my holler's creeks contribute. Orange day lily and Siberian iris leaves began poking through the leaf cover on raised beds around my house.

Cutleaf Toothwort (Dentaria laciniata) on March 12, 2019. [Photo: Cathie Bird]

By the end of the first week of March, I had observed new, full leaves of Amur honeysuckle and multiflora rose, forsythia flowers, and first leaves of one of the cutleaf toothworts I have flagged (photos above).

Sharp-lobed Hepatica (Hepatica acutiloba), emerging leaves. March 12, 2019. [Photo: Cathie Bird]

Now I'm also seeing leaves of sharp-lobed Hepatica, and Dogtooth violets (though not in the 2-sq.ft. plots I have marked). All of the red maples I observe for Nature's Notebook have open flowers, and members of this species all the way from the holler down to Knoxville are in some stage of emergence.

Sharp-lobed Hepatica (Hepatica acutiloba) leaves. March 12, 2019. [Photo: Cathie Bird]

Up in the bird world (I saw/heard very few birds this winter up here in the holler, another point of concern) I've seen and heard an eastern phoebe hanging around old nest sites and calling for a mate. Blue jays, chickadees and cardinals are moving back up into the holler from fields down below. Many of these birds come up here to nest in the forested areas around my house.

And, of course, with the movement of these smaller birds comes the more frequent hunting parties of a resident hawk (red-shouldered or broad-winged, not sure which). I even saw some wild turkeys up in the air last week. And heard some barred owls.

I think it's spring. I've increased the number of phenology observation days significantly. And that feels okay now.

 

My long visit with a northern pearly-eye

Northern pearly-eye (Lethe anthedon). This is the best image I could get of the top wing pattern. [Photo: Cathie Bird]

Late in the evening of August 19th, my border collie-mix, Shadow, came back into the house through the pet door. As sometimes happens, he also let a visitor into the house. At first I thought it was a large moth, but as I got closer looks, its profile suggested "butterfly". I chased it around the house, trying to catch it so I could put it outside, because my experience is that butterflies don't hold up as well as moths if they get stuck indoors. I gave up after it flew way out of my reach and looked as if it intended to stay there.

The following morning, it tried to find its own way out. I easily caught it in my bug jar as it fluttered against a glass door. Taking it back to an open window, I removed the lid and laid the jar on the window sill. Not before I got my camera ready, though.

At this point I guessed it was a Southern pearly-eye. I'd only seen one pearly-eye since I moved into the holler, and that was way down the road in the Terry Creek drainage. I hoped that good photos would help me identify genus and species for sure, since both northern and southern pearly-eyes live here.

Northern pearly-eye (Lethe anthedon) on August 20, 2018  [Photo: Cathie Bird]

The butterfly took its time exiting the bug jar. I got more than 40 photos before he flew back into the holler. I decided to submit one of them to BugGuide for help with the ID, and the feedback from a reviewer there was "Lethe anthedon" (Northern pearly-eye).

Fortunately I had uploaded a photo of my first pearly-eye sighting long ago to Flickr, because I couldn't locate it in my photo archives:

Southern pearly-eye (Lethe portlandia) -- maybe -- on June 20, 2010. [Photo: Cathie Bird]

Before next spring I intend to hone my pearly-eye recognition skills, and to be more fluent in in taxonomic issues for the pearly-eyes, and "tree browns" such as Lethe appalachia that I included in a previous post. Here's an excerpt from an info page on this at BugGuide:

Explanation of Names

 

This is a large, primarily Asian and Indonesian genus, with few representatives in North America. There are two different looking groups of species in North America that have been treated as distinct genera or subgenera by various authors. These are treated as subgenera of Lethe in 'A Catalogue of the Butterflies of the United States and Canada', which is followed on BugGuide.

• Enodia [including L. portlandia, L. anthedon, & L. creola]
• Satyrodes [including L. eurydice & L. appalachia]

 

The often cited distinction of larvae of Old World Lethe species having only one head horn, as compared to two on American species is false. All have two horns, though their length varies from species to species and with the age of the caterpillar. The top of the head is produced forward, and horns on mature larvae are close together and often parallel. On many species they are very close together, or sometimes fused at the base, and could conceivably be mistaken as a single horn - if a person does not look closely.

 

The genus Lethe is the only American representative of the Old World subtribe Lethina.

 

 I experienced some confusion on this because my go-to butterfly guide treats the pearly-eyes and browns as distinct genera (Enodia and Satyrodes) as opposed to subgenera -- for me, and perhaps other amateur naturalists, a common cause of hair-pulling.

Carolina wrens 2018, round 2

Carolina wren above her nest on June 28, 2018. [Photo: Cathie Bird]

In my last post I wrote about new nest building activity by a pair of Carolina wrens that ended on June 10th. As of June 17th, when I accidentally flushed the female out of the nest, I have considered the nest to be occupied. Ten days later, June 27th, I saw the female leave the nest, and the following day, got a photo of her (above) as she arrived at the nest. Later that day, I saw the female bring food a couple of times.

Both parents have been bringing food since July 2nd. Here's some video:

While this was going on outside, I consulted Cornell Lab's Birds of North America database, and continued working through their online Bird Academy course, Think Like a Bird: Understanding Bird Behavior. I've found both of these to be extremely valuable resources as a second round of wrens-in-the-holler stories unfolds.

Based on info from Birds of North America, I guessed that the nestlings would fledge sometime on Friday, the 6th of July.

I noticed an increase in the number of flights to the nest by both parents on July 5th. During the trips later in the day, the approach behavior of the parents shifted, with the mom coming to the porch rail and hopping back and forth before going up into the nest.

Also on the 5th, I got this video of the dad catching a bug. He had just been to the nest, and was singing after his exit, when he saw a bug and went after it:

This is the last video of activity at the second nest for this wren couple. Instead of taking food directly to the nest upon arrival, the mom wren sat above or below the nest making soft vocalizations for several seconds before entering. In this video, you can hear the dad wren singing fairly close by:

I may have caught a brief glimpse of at least one fledgling, but I could not get my camera or binoculars quick enough to verify this before the bird dropped out of sight under the porch.

Today, except for vocalizations of a male wren at the edge of the woods near the nest, it is very quiet. I am assuming all surviving nestlings have fledged. I'll watch, now, for any return visits by this second round of wrens, and for whatever else may draw my gaze around and beyond my planter garden.

Seeing forests, seeing trees

Buckeye-1 on March 29, 2017. [Photo: Cathie Bird]

For a couple of months, I've been planning a post on longer term changes I've noticed with plant and animal neighbors here in the holler. I've lived here 18 years, now, tracking these lives as well as my own in relation to theirs. I recently discovered that I've reached a new milestone of sorts: 10 years ago, I began formal submission of data on life phases of several species across the seasons for Nature's Notebook, a project of the USA-National Phenology Network.

This year, USA-NPN and Nature's Notebook celebrate a decade of data collection by citizen observers with new logos, and a special web page that will feature a different aspect of the network's 10-year history every month.

At the time I signed up, I didn't register that Nature's Notebook was a new project. So, I was somewhat surprised to learn last week that I'm one of three observers who have contributed data in all 10 of those years.

New 10-year celebration logo for Nature's Notebook. [Photo: USA-NPN]

Two major questions pervaded my reflections on last season’s holler observations: where did all the bees and butterflies go, and, how does the interplay of natural succession, climate change, and shifts in land management practices impact what I'm seeing (and thus reporting) in my observation area?

Thoughts about the history of human occupation at the geographic coordinates of the holler start to roll. The picture gets complex very fast, taking me into possibilities too numerous to manage in easily accessible mental spaces. I come back to the simple act of recording what's up with Buckeye-1 or the Great Spangled Fritillaries at that moment, on that day, in this holler in east Tennessee, knowing that others in the phenology network are recording observations for their species, where they live.

Great spangled fritillary (Speyeria cybele) on geraniums, May 13, 2017. [Photo: Cathie Bird]

Such ins and outs of thought, of awareness, have been a regular feature of my "phenology practice". It occurs to me as I write this post that this microcosmic process reflects a macrocosmic one: the expansion and contraction of subtle energy fields as a fundamental pattern of the cosmos, and noticeably at play in my practice of Qigong (a "Quantum physics technology").

I grew up in the grip of scientific materialism. My undergraduate training as a naturalist in the late sixties/early seventies was rooted there as well, though I can look back and see shifts toward thinking about the world in terms of whole, integrated systems rather than a collection of independent, disconnected parts. This shift even led me to change career goals and pursue a graduate degree in contemplative psychotherapy, as well as certification as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist.

For many years I felt a kind of tension growing -- between seeing forests and seeing trees -- often feeling that I was, at heart, more of a forest person. The feeling of energetic oppositions came alive especially when I remembered the tree person of my childhood exploring the life and landscapes of the Flint Hills and the Rocky Mountains.

I see myself now with at least a toe-hold in an integral world view, appreciating multiple points of view, and enjoying the heck out of migrations between wild, non-local exploration of mind and spirit, and the feet-on-the-ground-dodging-poison-ivy collection of phenology observations. I look forward to another 10 years of it!

Answers to the huge questions about bees and butterflies -- how their numbers and life phases reflect human numbers and life phases -- will reveal themselves over time. I'm content with supplying local observations to people who've dedicated their lives to figuring that kind of stuff out.

Just to finish this, in a bit of synchronicity, these articles popped into my viewshed as I was writing this post:

Questions, more than answers, are the pathway to collective wisdom (Daniel Christian Wahl, 1/16/18)

Beyond Biodiversity: A New Way of Looking at How Species Interconnect (Jim Robbins, 10/12/17)

Give one species the task to come up with a theory that spans them all: what good can come out of that? (Hanna Kokko, 11/29/17)

How Rising CO2 Levels May Contribute to Die-Off of Bees (Lisa Palmer, 5/10/16)

What’s Causing the Sharp Decline in Insects, and Why It Matters (Christian Schwägerl, 7/6/16)

 

American Trees Are Moving West, and No One Knows Why -- The Atlantic

I'm still working on a new blog post, but wanted to share a great article I saw at The Atlantic. I found it fascinating and relevant to the general content of HollerPhenology. The article at Science Advances is open access, and can be downloaded here.

From the article:

About three-quarters of tree species common to eastern American forests—including white oaks, sugar maples, and American hollies—have shifted their population center west since 1980. More than half of the species studied also moved northward during the same period.

These results, among the first to use empirical data to look at how climate change is shaping eastern forests, were published in Science Advances on Wednesday.

Read more...

Sightings in the holler: wood sorrels, blackberry, maple-leaf viburnam, lyreleaf sage, wood thrush

I have been recording the presence of wood thrushes for several years, but had not seen active individuals until one flew up out of the grass and landed on a branch, at eye level, only 10 feet or so from me on April 24th. I had my camera but focused on a mental picture so I could double-check the field marks when I got home. I'd have to say that was the most treasured sighting since my last post.

This spring, I discovered several new colonies of Oxalis violacea -- the violet wood sorrel -- mixed in with violets, orange jewelweed, wingstems and several other species:

Violet Wood sorrel (Oxalis violacea), April 25, 2017, [Photo: Cathie Bird]

This week, the fading O. violacea have been succeeded by their yellow relatives, Oxalis stricta, in numbers greater than I recall ever seeing before:

Common wood sorrel (Oxalis stricta), April 30, 2017 [Photo: Cathie Bird]

In other areas of the holler, multiflora rose bushes were loaded with flowers this week. The one I observe is in a shadier spot, and slower to flower. I saw its first flowers on April 25th, and got this photo on the 30th:

Multiflora rose flowers, April 30, 2017. [Photo: Cathie Bird]

I ended last week's holler report with a screen shot of a storm system that ended up dumping 10+ inches of rain in 2 days before moving on. For a few hours, Terry Creek came over the access lane and bridge, trapping me at the high end of the holler. Because many of the plant and tree species in my Nature's Notebook observation area grow on or near the banks of Hudson Branch, I was worried. When I did my first holler walk on Monday after the storm, I was happy to find all of them unharmed. Here's a photo of a downed tree and the gravel deposit it created; the white flowers in the bottom right area of the photo belong to Multiflora Rose-1:

Material left by areal flooding last weekend in the main channel of Hudson Branch, about 20 feet from the multiflora rose [Photo: Cathie Bird]

Also flowering in the past week: the mapleleaf viburnam...

Mapleleaf Viburnam, May 2, 2017. [Photo: Cathie Bird]

and blackberries, yay! Later in the season, I'll start taking a container on my holler walks so I can bring some ripe berries back to the house:

Blackberry flowers, April 30, 2017. [Photo: Cathie Bird]

Higher in the holler, and closer to my house, the lyreleaf sage is plentiful and peaking:

Lyreleaf Sage, May 1, 2017. [Photo: Cathie Bird]

I don't see a lot of bedstraw in the holler, which makes it more fun when I do spot some:

Bedstraw (Galium aparine), April 30, 2017. [Photo: Cathie Bird]

I think the early spring and its erratic temperatures made it hard for the Dwarf Crested Iris. Very few bloomed this year (photo below) and the ones I saw seemed smaller than usual:

Dwarf Crested Iris, April 26, 2017. [Photo: Cathie Bird]

Another group that seemed to suffer from early emergence into shifting air temperatures and weather patterns was the toothworts. I saw only one plant of one species with any flowers -- a Dentaria diphylla -- though many individuals of at least three of the four species found in the holler made it into the leaf phenophase.

Among the species showing up last week, but for which I rarely snag photos: whitetail dragonflies, tent worm caterpillars, little satyr butterflies.

One of my main projects this week is to settle a bunch of new garden plants into their permanent homes. The annuals I got from the greenhouse will give butterflies and insects something to sip on while the perennials put their flowering act together.