Commas and cloaks

Adult Eastern Comma (Polygonia comma)

What: It's been a busy couple of weeks wrapping up my semester at CCV and starting to wrap up at Crow's Path for the Spring. Today I did find a cormorant skull, that I'll post photos of in a few days. In the meantime, enjoy these photos of an eastern comma and a mourning cloak. They're among our first butterflies to emerge in the spring. Now with the prolonged warm weather and appearance of more and more flowers (how about all that celandine along the bike path, marigold along mucky drainages, and gorgeous and subtle green flowers of striped maple?) there are many more adult butterflies and moths appearing.

Overwintered adult mourning cloak (Nymphalis antiopa)

Ecological notes: While out in Centennial Woods a couple of weeks ago I was watching a couple dozen or so mourning cloaks flitting around. Occasionally they'd come into another's territory and they'd spiral whimsically up into the sky together. It was elegant and graceful and then the awkward comma would get all huffy and jump into the mix. At first it seemed confused, like it didn't know that the mourning cloaks weren't possible mates. But then it seemed more like it was getting angry that the mourning cloaks were in its breeding area and was just trying to chase them away. The tiny drama was endearing in that condescending, anthropomorphic kind of way.

Both species breed in the spring, and this is the only time of year this territorial behavior is observed. Apparently my theory of defending breeding areas has largely been dispelled in recent years according to a local entomologist, but it seemed the easiest and most obvious explanation. More appealing than, "the commas get confused and can't tell the mourning cloaks from a female comma").

Where: Centennial Woods

Woodchucks, red shouldered hawks, and some insects

What: What a grand spring day. I'd never been to Woodside Park in Essex and on a whim while driving home from a great day teaching at Founders Elementary I stopped by to check it out. Turns out it's an incredible patch of floodplain forest and some floodplain controlled cattail marshes/ponds with heaps of wildlife. Below are some of the photographic highlights (including a couple blurry ones, mostly because the subject matter was so good).

Ecological notes: This is more of a photo essay, but I was impressed with the number of flying insects out and about. Just as I arrived, Patty, who works at the detention center, tipped me off to a red-shouldered hawk nest. The hawk wasn't on the nest so I walked the loop first. The spring ephemerals were out in abundance - trout lily, marsh marigold, stinking benjamin, large-flowered trillium, bloodroot, wood anemone, and a few others. So were the insects. I noticed that a duskywing (skipper family based on the curved knob at the tip of the antennae, but couldn't ID to species) was "mobbing a morning cloak" which was interesting. Each time the mourning cloak got near the skipper chased it off. Birds do it, why not butterflies (probably because other butterflies aren't predators on caterpillars)?

At the end of my walk, I spent about an hour and a half watching the nest of a red-shouldered hawk (pictured above). The hawk made lots of angry calls as I approached (lasted about 5 minutes before stopping). While on the nest it only moved its head and rarely that. It seemed to look more energetically when the crows flew by, even though the crows didn't pay much attention. Met Tom Jiamachello as I was leaving and he said the pair had nested her the previous three years.

I spotted a little woodchuck denning up next to the tracks. The soils are all deltaic sands, perfect for digging in and there were several other holes in the area. The woodchuck left noisely over the dry leaves, stopping to nibble what looked like celandine, but I couldn't tell for sure. It was gone for about 20 minutes and returned a bit noisier carrying a huge bundle of oak leaves in its mouth. It dropped them off in a hurry then came out and stood watch for another few minutes before disappearing back down its tunnel.

Where: Woodside Park.

Other notes: While looking up information on the butterflies I noticed that the Red Admiral, Eastern Comma, and Mourning Cloak all overwinter as adults, which I thought was interesting, and so not surprisign that they're among the first butterflies to see in large numbers in the spring.