2013 Backyard bird and butterfly (and dragonfly too) watching

[evtubbergh]

Apple your photos are very good. What camera and lens do you use?

[applestar]

iPhone 4....

[applestar]

Sometimes, it pays to wake up in the middle of the night.
It's 3:50AM and I started hearing a Great Horned Owl calling outside-- "wh-wh-who-whoo who whoo"
After about 5 minutes, a 2nd one started to answer, lower and farther away? And now, a third has joined the chorus.

...4am and they are done -- just an 8 min window of opportunity or you'll never know they were around.

[rainbowgardener]

Wonderful! What a treat! They will begin their courtship season soon, so if you are awake very early in the AM, you may hear them more. Where I used to live on five wooded acres, someone had put a half barrel VERY high up in a huge old tree and the great horned owls nested in it every year. Otherwise they just use an old crows nest or something. Look for nests in a branch crotch near the trunk of a tree, very high up. They start nesting at the beginning of the new year.

[applestar]

I've been seeing a flock of Yellow Rumped Warblers in the garden. They seem to go everywhere -- before we had the freeze that killed the garden, I thought they were trying to eat tomato blossoms, but then realized they were skimming them without plucking them. Maybe they are looking for bugs? They were out there again today, hopping in and out of freeze killed tomato vines, the honeysuckle arbor, apple and pear espalier branches....

The honeysuckle arbor is a popular hideaway. A small quick hopping bird turned out to be a Chickadee with a seed -- looked like a sunflower seed -- in its beaks, looking for a good spot to crack it open.

Today, there were new visitors -- a pair of Hairy Woodpeckers. I first saw one pecking at a long dead tomato vine -- it was dried up and had some cracks and holes... Then I saw the second one, and this one was going up and down a long branch I'd used to stake a tomato. So I started looking closer and sure enough, they were male and female. They stayed a while, going from tomato plant to tomato plant, exploring cracks in the bamboo stakes, etc.

One of our cats was on the windowsill, intently looking down with her forehead pressed to the glass. I couldn't get the same angle of view, so I couldn't see what she was looking at until a Mockingbird flew out of the Arrowwood Viburnum which still has quite a supply of indigo blue berries on it. I believe they taste better after a few frost and freezes.

[PunkRotten]

Very nice AS. That is one of the main things I like about gardening; all the wildlife it attracts.

[applestar]

moving INDOORS for the winter... -- Elsewhere, I posted about the Pickleworm caterpillars and moth that was found in DD's bedroom.

Today, I found this one -- another moth I believe -- on a chartreuse Cherkee Tiger Large Red tomato leaf:

I think it's the adult form of this inchworm caterpillar that was pretending to be a stick on my lemon balm earlier in fall: [img]https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3795/11500771263_7d187f3fda_b.jpg[/img]

...so I'm thinking it's a geometrid, but which one?

[applestar]

Ah ha! I KNEW it looked familiar -- it's a False Crocus Geometer moth.

[tomf]

I like the blue and purple butterfly.

[applestar]

Yes, yes, digging up an old thread

Subject: 2013 Backyard bird and butterfly (and dragonfly too) watching

...and this caterpillar I don't recognize on the old picnic bench

Subject: 2013 Backyard bird and butterfly (and dragonfly too) watching

Ah ha! It's this one, I think:
Turbulent Phosphila Moth Caterpillar
https://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/20048113

It says their host plant is greenbrier, so you may have some in your woods, rainbowgardener.

...according to bug guide, it's related to cutworms and the adult moth is amazingly plain considering the larval form.... I guess it explains the bare, thorny smilax vines with no leaves at all that I sometimes find growing..
https://bugguide.net/node/view/27876/bgimage

...I *almost* want to go back outside and see if it's still there so I can turn it over to see the yellow belly -- I didn't see that because I was ony looking at it from directly above.

I just HAD to make a comparison between the caterpillar I found in my backyard in 2013 ...and this anime character from BLEACH....

...and if you know this manga/anime by Tite Kubo, Squad 12 Captain Kurotsuchi’s zanpakuto in Bankai form is a caterpillar, and a moth in its avatar form....