Fall Favorites

Monarch

There are miles of trails to walk at Sandy Creek Nature Center, a wonderful nature park in Athens, Georgia, where I like to spend a lot of time, and where I also volunteer. I find that each trail there is special for different reasons. Some are just peaceful and beautiful. Others are good for finding certain birds, or flowers or fungi, or to hear the whack of a beaver tail at dusk. Some trails have good logs to roll and look for salamanders, some trails lead to the creek, and others have good loops to walk with school kids. I like them all. But in the fall, my favorite trail is also the shortest, the loop that runs through the restored Piedmont Prairie--a small and sunny, open space, filled with wildflowers and tall grasses. A haven for insects and spiders, birds, snakes, frogs, rabbits and rodents. This trail can take you two minutes or two hours, depending on how much time you want to spend looking and listening. I find that it is a perfect element to include in a hike with 4th Grade classes who have come to learn about the solar system and see a planetarium program. On our trail hike, I like to talk to the kids about the changing seasons and how the living things are preparing for winter. The leaves on the trees are changing color. Fruit on the trees and vines and grasses and flowers are ripening. Birds are feeding on the flowers and grass seeds as they prepare for migration. Spiders that hatched in the spring are now reaching maturity, their webs stretched across paths and loaded with insects. Their egg sacs will appear as the weather cools. There's always a lot to see. I think that the kids have a good time, and hopefully they learn a lot. I try to share my enthusiasm, too, because I love it all. But I also have a special love for butterflies, so I hype that up a lot. And, the Prairie in the fall also happens to be a great place for seeing butterflies, which makes it one of my favorite places to visit and share. 

Leaf footed bugs and nymphs on Passion Vine

Poke Berries

Empty Cicada shell

Green Lynx Spider

Robber Fly

The loop through the Prairie is a different experience every year. One year you will find Praying Mantises hiding in the tops of the tall plants. In another, Bird Grasshoppers pop every which way across the trail and over the tall grasses. Or the Orbweaver Spiders may have staked out stations along the entire trail, hiding behind the zigzags in their webs. This year, Passion Vines grew in profusion, attracting Gulf Fritillary butterflies in large numbers, and growing so robustly that they covered the path. Passion Vine is the host plant for the Gulf Fritillary butterfly, and they come to lay their eggs on this particular plant. The park naturalists closed the loop for a few weeks to give the tiny Fritillary caterpillars a chance to eat and grow and go through their metamorphosis. Left undisturbed, butterflies of all kinds busily fed on the Passion Flowers, Frostflowers, Milkweed, Thistles, and other nectar plants. 

Gulf Fritillary, drinking nectar

Gulf Fritillary caterpillar on Passion Vine tendril

Passion Flower

Mating Fritillaries next to empty Chrysalis

Fruit from Passion Vine

Last week I took 2 groups of energetic 4th graders on a larger loop through the woods that ended with a walk through the Prairie. As we cleared the shady forest and entered into the sunny and grassy area with its tall flowers, I prepped the kids by telling them how that they were about to experience something spectacular. And both times, as we came near, I knew that they were suitably impressed. I could tell by all the squeals and wows! I get it, because I feel the same way, every time. There is something magical about walking into a butterfly meadow.  We saw dozens of yellow and black Eastern Tiger Swallowtails, (the state butterfly of Georgia, by the way) and many, many Gulf Fritillaries, as well as a Monarch, a Viceroy, various Skippers, Satyrs, Azures, Hairstreaks, and a Red Spotted Purple. It was a great show and gave me a chance to fit in my standard message about how important it is to have green spaces--sanctuaries for nature, as well as for people. This is an important lesson for preparing the way for the next generation of environmental stewards. You protect the things you know. And who wouldn't want to protect a magical place like this? 

Silver Spotted Skipper

American Painted Lady and Ailanthus Web Worm Moth

Clouded Skipper

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (female, dark form)

Red-spotted Purple

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (male)

The Long Hot Summer (Yeehaw!)

Every July about this time I find myself thankful for the heat of summer. Steam and heat aside, this is a great time to be in the yard. Our wildlife garden is almost at full peak, producing flowers and leafy shelter that attract the pollinators and the rest of the food web that I garden to provide habitat for. The swamp sunflowers in the front yard have grown tall, giving a quiet place for a baby deer to sleep while mom is out looking for food. The bushy Muhly grass, Mountain Mint and Black-eyed Susans are a refuge for fireflies that emerge in the evening. Tiny spiderlings set up their webs, hidden in the thickening greenery, where they hunt for prey that increases in size as they do. Caterpillars silently munch on plant parts, leaving specks of frass and chewed up leaves in their wake. Thrashers and Towhees scurry through the flower beds, grabbing caterpillars and spiders as they forage for spilled seed from the feeders. Mature vines and tube-shaped flowers are food for the hummingbirds. By July, at least one brood of newbies are out foraging for themselves. They visit the sugar water feeders, but they also spend a lot of time sucking out of flowers, especially the ones with long stems that they can sit on and rest between hovering and being chased off by older birds. Hovering is tiring.

This time of year, my glasses and camera lenses that are cool from the indoor A/C fog up immediately upon stepping out of the house or from a cool car. I can wipe the glasses, but have to wait for the camera to warm up because merely wiping the external glass is not enough. The camera will keep fogging up until the temperature has equalized. I've learned to keep my camera case in the back of the car, away from the A/C when I'm driving somewhere to take photos. I also take the camera out of its case right away when I get outside so it can start warming up, and sometimes face the glass into the sun to quick-start the process. 

Today I went out into the back yard just as it started to get hot, around 10am. The plan was to photograph some bees. My camera was cold, so I needed to give it time to acclimate, and so I walked over to one of the Black-eyed Susan patches in the yard to see what insects might be flying around. Before I knew it, an hour had passed and I had taken dozens of photos just with my phone. It's quickly becoming my go-to camera. They say that the best camera is the one you have with you. This one takes decent enough photos, and doesn't fog up! I never did pull out the other camera.

But the reason I spent an hour in the flower patch was that there was so much going on just on this single species of flower that I couldn't stop searching for more. As the morning warmed and the sun moved higher and brighter, the insects became more active, and new ones showed up. Butterflies, for example, were late arrivals. It was great fun and I had forgotten from last year just how much I love spending time crawling around in the flowers. I couldn't help but think that if there is this much life in a small flower patch, just imagine a prairie or a forest or a jungle. And this was just what I could see with my naked eye. So exciting--hello summer! 

Here are some images from my morning in the Rudbeckia as I waited for my other camera to thaw. 

Ant

Caterpillar

Sleepy Scoliid Wasp

Sleepy Leaf-cutter Bee

Leafhopper

Tiny Wasps

Planthopper Nymph

Some sort of Nectar Feeding Fly

Lacewing Egg (circled)

Ladybeetle

Carpenter-mimic Leafcutter Bee

Assassin Bug

Crab Spider

Stink Bug Nymphs

Red Cocklebur Weevil. They feed  "primarily on Asteraceae species, including sunflowers, ragweed, thistle, cocklebur, joe-pye weed, ironweed, and rosinweed"

Green Lynx Spider

Honey Bee

Not sure!

Small Leaf Cutter Bee

Fiery Skipper

My Wonderful Garbage

 

Delicate Pink Worm Strings

Feeding the Worms

by Danusha Laméris

Ever since I found that earth worms have taste buds

all over the delicate pink strings of their bodies, 

I pause dropping apple peels into the compost bin, imagine

the dark, writhing ecstasy, the sweetness of apples

permeating their pores. I offer beets and parsley,

avocado, and melon, the feathery tops of carrots.

I'd always thought theirs a menial life, eyeless and hidden,

almost vulgar--though now, it seems, they bear a pleasure 

so sublime, so decadent, I want to contribute however I can,

forgetting, a moment, my place on the menu.

I'll admit it right now. I'm a pretty lazy composter. We have a bin in the backyard, and have for years. But I don't do much to help it along. And I haven't pulled any finished compost out of the door at the bottom since I set it up in 2015. I don't crush my eggshells, and I never peel off the plastic tags from the produce. I have a special tool for stirring up and turning the compost, but I forget about it for months or years. We used to have 2 bins, before we moved, but only kept one to save space. And since I set it up, oh so many years ago,  I have done precious little besides pouring in the kitchen scraps and tossing in the occasional armful of dry fall leaves when it gets too wet. I could feel guilty about my shortcomings, but I don't. It's compost. And lucky for me, the compost bin basically runs itself.

The Bin

About 2 1/2 months ago, the compost bin was getting close to overflowing. We had some painters coming to work around the house and I was self-conscious about the strong smell of coffee grounds and orange peels that would waft off the top of the un-turnable pile for a few days after dumping, right next to their work area. I knew it was time to empty it out, and even move it to a new and better place. But I was not in the mood to do that. Besides everything else, a large contingent of winged ants had amassed on the outside of the bin, preparing for mating flights. They were there for days. This wasn't a good time to dig in. So I just stopped using the bin for a while. It felt strange putting all the kitchen trimmings in the trash, after making a habit of saving scraps for composting. Our trash bags were suddenly wet and smelly, and the outdoor garbage bin filled faster. 

Inside the bin: Stickers, shells, avocado pits. Note large ant pile of humus on lower left.
(I took out the stick--don't know what that was doing there)

One day, about 6 weeks later (painting took a long time), I got curious and opened the lid of the bin. To my amazement, the pile had sunk a good 6 inches. It smelled gorgeous--fresh and earthy. A large colony of ants had settled in and had fluffed up a pile of the rich, dark humus--the result of the composted plant matter. It turns out that ants do a lot of work in a compost bin, turning over the detritus and bringing in fungus and bacteria that help break everything down. I read that turning the pile can deter them. Good thing I never maintain my compost bin! (Little joke.)

Tiny flies and spider webs

Special Spider Habitat in an Eggshell

Potato Bugs

Roaches Dive for Cover

Earwig Among the Ants (I don't know if this is a peaceful encounter)

As I examined the shrunken heap, I was fascinated to see the many arthropod inhabitants. I saw tiny flies and flying insects on the walls, and figured that they must eventually end up as food for the dozens of spiders who had each inhabited her own eggshell. Potato bugs (or roly-polys or pill bugs) scurried out of sight when I lifted the lid, as did the numerous, large cockroaches and earwigs--the detritus eating A-Team! Sometimes when I opened the lid, a lucky fly would land on the decaying produce (or maybe they were unlucky if they got shut in and eaten by the spiders). 

Free Range Spider

Fly on the Ant Mound

False Blister Beetle Seems Out of Place Here--Usually Found on Flowers

Egg Casings--not sure species

Green Bottle Fly

Checking on the goings on in the compost bin has become my latest hobby. I find something new every time I look. I enjoy quickly lifting the lid to see if anything surprising is happening in the darkness. The sunlight and my movement causes quick dives for cover. Many of my photos of the scurriers are blurry or partial because of that mad dash for shelter! This week when I looked, I noticed a new, larger species of ant patrolling the rim of the bin. I don't know my ants well, so I can't be sure they were not just the soldiers of the ones I'd seen before, but it would not surprise me to know that there were several species living inside. I also found large clusters of ants tending eggs. Some had even taken over the egg shells that had previously been occupied by spiders. 

Ants, Eggs and Larvae in an Onion

Ants Have Evicted the Spider

I guess the point of this all is that there is wonder to be found everywhere, if you just look. Even in the compost. After seeing the multiverse that exists in my compost pile, I feel a bit hesitant to move it or stir it up, because it's so marvelous. But I also know that my garden can always use some nice rich soil, and I'm tired of throwing away all those valuable veggie scraps. And the worms and ants and spiders and roaches will all get back to work again about as fast as I can set up the bin in the new location. They're self starters. 

Fresh, Sweet Humus, with some Cantaloupe Seeds Tossed in for Fun