Down in the Grass

 

After flourishing unshorn for most of the summer the meadow is a complex and inviting feature in the Park landscape.

Monarch butterfly on clover

A variety of grasses and wildflowers have accomplished their cycle of flowering and seed production.

A Grass-Veneer moth

Aptly named Grass-Veneer moths, when disturbed, fly moth-like with wings outstretched in short fluttery bursts to a nearby perch.

At rest they blend in securely with the stem of their host.

European Earwig

An earwig on the hunt climbs through the diaphanous panicle of a seed head.

Seven-spotted Lady Beetle

Several species of lady beetles, juveniles and adults, similarly find foraging opportunities, such as aphids.

Notated Lady Beetle

Ursine Spurleg Lady Beetle

A lady beetle larva

Another juvenile lady beetle

Lygus nymph

Plant bugs of all ages, sizes, and finery inhabit the luxurious vegetation.

A Differential Grasshopper

A meadow visit wouldn't be complete without a grasshopper encounter.

Dispatch from the Meadow

Eastern Tailed-Blue

Early yesterday morning the ripening grasses held their seeds aloft in the meadow experiment at Halibut Point.

Black-eyed Susan

Wildflowers bloomed where tractors had formerly maintained a tabletop lawn.

White-tailed Deer

All parties stayed alert as the boundaries of wilderness and civilization loosened.

Calico Pennant

Dragonflies chose promontories for resting between sorties over the fertile landscape.

House Wren

Nesting birds put song in the air.

A new, to me, flower

I went home to look up the identity of a novelty, and recorded this label. [Chamaecrista fasciculata - Partridge Pea, Caesalpinioideae - Peacock Flower Subfamily, Family Fabaceae - Legumes.] Thoughts of peas, partridges, and peacocks at Halibut Point danced in my head.

Evidently I just missed the giant self-mulching mower that leveled the playing field later that morning. A new order, a new idea holds the ground. I'm left with the hope that those waving grains take hold in a new season, some of them nourishing a sparrow or two.

 

Waterside Reckoning

 

Green Heron getting wet

In the last posting we saw that the fishing prowess of the Green Heron sometimes puts it into the watery element of its prey.

Fluff-drying on the quarry ledge

Back ashore, the baleful look on its face tells us everything about its immersion aversion.

Splashing cormorant

Far beyond its shoulder - out near where the gulls congregate for their fresh-water ablutions and gossip -  a cormorant is gleefully bathing.

At the end of its rinse the cormorant heads to the quarry rim to dry off.

The waterlogged seabird splashes down heavily, because cormorants don't shed water the way gulls and ducks do.

Approaching a sunny and seemingly spacious platform the cormorant is greeted by an ever more baleful look from the heron.

The birds exchange a few insults. The scrappy heron asserts its right of first possession.

A sensible detente ensues. The cormorant spreads its wings atop an adjacent promontory.

Soon, however, covetousness, past glories, poor intelligence, or the burden of a fixed plan get the better of the cormorant.

It launches its superior bulk toward the territory of its bantam neighbor.

They glare at each other across the shattered truce as the heron considers the affront to its boundaries.

It delivers a final apocalyptic warning to the intruder from the confidence of its fish skewering bill at the tip of a whip-quick neck.

The cormorant retreats. The heron accepts its deferential posture and distance once the cormorant respects the necessities of dignified coexistence.

A Dining Day

Making the rounds at Halibut Point today I came upon a variety of birds busily provisioning themselves.

Downy Woodpecker

This Downy Woodpecker was digging so intently into an old sumac tree that it didn't seem to mind my approach to within a few feet.

It used all its body parts to support its foraging endeavor,

especially the short, stiff tail feathers it uses as a prop while excavating.

Of course its chisel-point bill is its principal asset in the quest for bugs under bark.

Black Duck and Pickerelweed

In an aquatic niche dabbling ducks contentedly browse for the algae and other fine-textured plants they prefer.

Ducks amid Water-shield

They glean much of this food from the underwater surfaces of host plants or other objects.

Green Heron

This Green Heron on the other hand has been waiting motionless at waterside until it spotted its prey.

It adeptly seized a fish swimming just below the surface.

Although neither buoyant nor water-repellant itself the heron managed to snare its quarry,

and bring it triumphantly back to the granite promontory.

With a deft flick of its head the heron positioned the fish to swallow head first, fins pointed rearward.

It was a successful dining day for all us hunters and observers.

The Bees Have It

 

Yellow Thistle, Cirsium horridulum

Intriguingly, ominously, statuesquely, yellow thistles send up flower stalks in the second year of their biennial life, in some of the toughest terrain on Halibut Point.

A pregnant thistle rosette

The stalks ascend from spiny dinner plate-sized crowns that formed the previous year.

A bumblebee with pollen pouches already bulging

approaches a thistle

Thistle flowers attract certain species of bees fulfilling the mutual pollination bargain. Both bee and thistle have self-protective features that make people wary.

Bumblebee burrowing into a thistle flower

The anatomies of the bee and the plant uniquely support each other. No other orders of insects have developed a similar partnership with the local yellow thistles during my observations, although certain butterflies reportedly value these nectar-rich flowers. 

Western Honeybee

This bee's adaptations include specialized tastes, mouthparts, and foraging abilities within a forest of stamens.

Small Carpenter Bee

The thistle's appeal almost exclusively to bees is the mirror opposite of the daisy's eclectic pollinating appeal throughout the insect orders, that we have seen in the previous series of posts.

Bi-colored Striped Sweat Bee

The pincushion-like flower heads are packed with small disk florets.

Airborne thistle seeds

The blossoms give way to cottony white seed heads that shatter to the wind and float free-spiritedly to distant outposts where they sometimes become pariahs in pastures or people paths.

Goldfinch perched within a Canadian Thistle

All parts of the plants, including the seeds, have sharp spines. Goldfinches that thrive on them are undeterred and go about their harvests acrobatically as though scripting a fairy tale.