This is the season of berries. Raspberries are red for the eating, and chokecherries are getting plump and red.
And this butterfly, an anglewing, which hibernates all winter as an adult, is having a fresh emergence.
And even the lizards are getting fat.
Here’s a pair of arctic blues, Agriades rustica, best friends, on a Potentilla flower.
Anarta nigrolunata, a little fuzzy moth, on little blue forget-me-not flowers, and on a rock.
And Lasionycta dolosa, the most common species in this genus of Hadenine owlet moths on the Pikes Peak tundra. This moth is shown only from Colorado on the Moth Photographers Group, but seems to range from RMNP to the San Juans, with Pikes Peak in the middle. That long left antenna is actually a grass awn. And how about that tiny black beetle?
Mead’s sulfur, Colias meadii, is one of the most common butterflies of the tundra. The upper side is all dark orange.
Boloria chariclea a lesser fritillary from the tundra, on old-man-of-the-mountain flowers, pretty much all day.
Rather than having 15 separate posts on the red tailed hawk nest in our backyard, I have put a photo log here for those who are interested. The parent birds arrived in February and March.
The nest itself is in the damaged crown of a blue spruce. They began building it in 2016, but didn’t use it last year. This year, in March and April they added to it and began sitting by about the first of May.
What a great week at The Nature Place near Florissant, Colorado. Thanks to all the Williams alumni for being interesting people engaged in studies of geology and natural history. See the post below this one for an update on our rabbit bot fly. But first, here are a few photos. Remember the anicia checkerspot?
And, of course, the blue columbine from above the snowfields on Horseshoe Mountain.
And the 50+ elk across the stream below the cirque.
And Parry’s primrose, one of the most photographed flowers in the tundra.
And meanwhile, back at the lodge, Caripeta aequaliaria, the red girdle moth, hiding under the eaves.
And this little mountain bluebird juvenile on Wilkerson Pass.
Thanks for a great week! See you all in 2019? If I’m not in a wheelchair.
What th—? A Rabbit Bot Fly? Really??
Today on Shelf Road in Fremont Co., Sam Peck, a veteran Blackhawk helicopter pilot and one of the Nature Place Staff, brought me the most amazing insect I’ve seen in years. Mystified at what it might be, I posted it on Arthropods Colorado Facebook group. Within an hour or two, I had about thirty comments, among which was an identification to genus and family: Alejandro Estrada identified it as a bot fly, genus Cuterebra, family Oestridae. Eric Eaton, entomology generalist who knows almost everything with six legs, further identified it as a rabbit bot, based in part on the red in the eyes. OMG. Then Prof. Boettner from UMass went still further, calling it Cuterebra lepusculi, and female based on the wide gap between the eyes. He verified that only the females have the red eye spots, and said that they fade with time in museum specimens. Unbelievable. They attack mainly cottontail rabbits. Other commenters noted how cute it is, but still others found this revolting, as bot flies are parasites that lay eggs under your skin, where the larvae hatch and cause an inflamed canker that eventually ruptures to allow the hideous (but cute) parasite to fly away. Although this particular specimen was not capable of flight, Prof Boettner assures me that once this thing sits for 24 hours or so, it will fly like its house is on fire, and will lay eggs in rabbit burrows.
Prof. Boettner’s last email on this subject states, “Hi Sam. Say hi to the Williams College gang for me. I should mention that although bots have short lives, females can lay over a thousand eggs in that short 10 day lifespan. And they only need one male and female egg to survive to keep the population stable. Amazing every rabbit isn’t infested. But they waste a lot laid in runways that never get in a host. That is a beauty that you found. One of the larger bots in the world. There is one in New Mexico that has yours beat in size. C. mirabilis. Nearly 2 inch long females! It uses black tailed jackrabbits as a host. And the male of that species has never been seen. So lots of mystery in the bot world.” He is doing DNA studies, and expressed the hope that I might have taken the specimen. Darn. So, maybe Sam Peck will go back up there and find me another one.
Some viewers thought it might be a sculpture, a model. But it’s the real thing. After that, this moth larva seemed almost pedestrian.
Here are a few finds from yesterday’s pickings through the paper shales from Florissant. These are from 36 million years ago, caught in ash falls from nearby volcanoes and trapped in the mud on the bottom of the lake. A fly, a beetle, and a fly/ant/gastropod assemblage.
In spite of the hard freeze in May, flowers are doing well, and the goldfinches are making a meal of the bear’s britches.
Many years ago my brother Phil and I wrote stories together. It was a game. I’d write an introductory sentence, and he’d follow it with something. The art was to try to throw the other guy a curve while still maintaining a sense of direction in the “plot.” I found these two stories in my archives. My parts are in standard face, Phil’s are in italics. You should try this sometime.
I wrote this when my brother, Phil, and I were lamenting on things going wrong. It seems appropriate for Democrats now, and Republicans in a couple years.
Years ago, when I was a kid, I heard about a Frank Lutz study in which snowy tree crickets could be used as a thermometer by counting their chirping rate, which, because they are poikilotherms, varies with the ambient temperature. At the time I thought that was interesting, but a little irrelevant, since I had a thermometer. But we don’t always have a thermometer when we’re, say, camping, so a few years ago I had my Biology class make a thermometer by going outside, recording the temperature, and counting the chirps per minute of our local crickets. I don’t know the cricket species, but it is a common one in late summer when school starts. Here are their data, compiled to show a good polynomial fit. The linear equation, upper left, is also a good fit at r = 0.96.
mountainbreakfast 