Seasonal Adjustments

Once again having let way too much time go by between posts, here are a few of the pictures I’ve managed to take since my last update. I have been getting out pretty regularly but the butterflies are about done for this year and birds in general seem to be keeping quiet and hidden from me. Also noticing the days growing shorter and temperatures turning cooler. Asters and aspens have peaked and the chamisa nearly done as well, but in just the last few days I’ve noticed the cottonwoods down by the Rio Grande have turned a gorgeous golden color.

Autumn Cottonwoods

I ended my last posting talking about all the water at Piedras Marcadas Dam that had drawn in some rather unusual birds (kingfisher? snipe?) for that normally dry location. Returning just a few days later, the water and all those riparian habitat birds had disappeared, and the Great Horned Owl had gone back into hiding. Even the deep mud had pretty much dried up, which was good since I could look around the milkweed for the Monarch caterpillars and chrysalises that I’d lucked into seeing a few of last year. No luck on that score, but did see a pretty fresh Variegated Fritillary. Usually fairly common to see during the summer, they weren’t seen nearly as often this year.

Variegated Fritillary (Euptoieta claudia)

There was also a Say’s Phoebe posing nicely for me from its usual spot, where it goes after flying insects before returning to this perch.

Say’s Phoebe

Later that same morning, I dropped by Embudito and found the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher again in the same area it had been almost a week earlier. This time there were two of them and one let me get close enough for a couple of better pictures.

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher

Later that afternoon, a birder friend was asking on Facebook about where to look for this bird since she really wanted it for her list. Ended up meeting her in Embudito the next morning where after working our way all the way up and down the canyon, we finally got it for her in pretty much the same spot they had been the day before. Like some other bird species, this one seems to come out later in the morning, we’re guessing about when the bugs start flying around those bushes. It was also a little surprising so late in the year to still have quite a few hummingbirds flying around there in the canyon; mostly Broad-tailed Hummingbirds but also a couple of Rufous Hummingbirds. I managed a decent shot of one of the female Broad-taileds nectaring on one of the very few globe mallow plants still in bloom,

Broad-tailed Hummingbird

and had another sit for its portrait at quite close range; she’d seemed rather successful in powdering her bill with a bit of pollen.

Broad-tailed Hummingbird

A few other birds from different locations recently included this Northern Flicker, one of the very few birds I saw on a walk at Willow Creek Open Space,

Northern Flicker

a Canyon Towhee perched on a cholla in Embudito,

Canyon Towhee

and a Great Blue Heron working the irrigation ditch just in front of Bosque School, first time I’ve seen one there.

Great Blue Heron

Last week’s Thursday Birder trip to Whitfield Wildlife Conservation Area turned up some good birds, such as our first Northern Harrier for the season, quite a few migrating Sandhill Cranes, a pair of Ring-necked Pheasants, large flock of American Wigeon, and about 30 more species.  I didn’t manage to get any decent bird pictures that day, but liked this shot of milkweed seeds. Large areas of milkweed there at Whitfield do attract good numbers of Monarchs as they migrate through every year.

Milkweed

Butterfly-wise, we’re still seeing those Painted Lady butterflies that have been around in unusually large numbers just about everywhere this year,

Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui)

but it was a real treat to realize one I saw was instead the closely-related West Coast Lady that we just don’t see around here all that often.

West Coast Lady (Vanessa annabella)

One of the best ways to tell them apart is those markings near the wingtip – the orange bar of the West Coast Lady just inside that line of white dots is a white bar on the Painted Lady and the other species we sometimes see around here, the American Lady (Vanessa virginiensis).

 

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