The Acadia Birding Festival is Maine’s premiere bird watching festival and was established in 1998.
Group at Indian Point Blagden Preserve
This year, the Festival is from 28-31 May, plus two post-festival trips on 1-2 June, and over these days it visits 27 different birding locations.
Garden in the Woods, at Framingham, Massachusetts, is a remarkable piece of woodland that has been developed and nurtured over many decades with the primary aim of encouraging the use of NE USA native plant and flower species in people’s gardens, and the protection of endangered species.
One of the ponds at Garden In The Woods (cellphone photo)
It is the headquarters of the New England Wild Flower Society [NEWFS] and – especially in May – is a delight to visit and see so many flower species in bloom.
A Trillium (I believe ‘grandiflora’, but I need to check that.)
My own first visit to G.I.T.W. was a couple of years ago and I will always remember it for two reasons. The first of these was that I had never encountered such a delightful setting for so many species of wild flowers. The second, however, was for one of the worst-possible reasons, and that came in the form of a telephone call from my wife, telling me that evil, homicidal morons had just set off a bomb at the Boston Marathon, only a few miles to the east. Enough said.
Not exactly a native species, but azaleas are an obvious, spring high-point in virtually any garden.
Since then, I have been back three further times, including my most recent visit, to which this post refers.
I have to confess, though, that I have yet to time a May visit to perfection – in other words to be there when the spring ephemeral flowers are at the height of their glory. This time I was just a few days too late.
A small but very eye-catching mint or deadnettle species that I need to check more thoroughly.
Star Flowers
Bad timing aside, this visit did bring me into contact with some extremely pleasant people, the first of whom – Dave T. – is a volunteer at Garden in the Woods. Dave, I enjoyed our conversation greatly and a large part of that enjoyment came from your knowledge and great enthusiasm for this remarkable place.
As a Twitter acquaintance wrote, that’s me “getting down and dirty!” Yes… Can’t deny it. But I like to think it was in a good cause! {:-)
And then there was an immensely pleasant couple who were sufficiently amused to find me laying flat on my face across a path, in order to take a photo of starflowers, that the gentleman in question photographed me doing so, and one of his shots is shown above! (Please know that my daughter in England saw your photo on Twitter and made me laugh when she commented: “My Dad is so normal. I know who to blame now!” {:-)
The pendulous flower of a Purple Pitcher Plant
Oh, and for those of you with children or grand children to entertain, I was really pleased to see that a very imaginative and very natural play area has been installed that is clearly on a woodland theme and will undoubtedly be a great and rather crucial way to introduce youngsters to the natural world that is nowadays increasingly ignored in favour of computer games and other, related distractions.
I intend to add more to this post in a few days’ time, after my wife and I get home from a few days vacation in New England (some of which will be the subject of additional wildlife photography posts in this blog).
I can’t close without showing you a lovely little ‘Skipper’ species of butterfly on Eastern Bluestar
Until then, I hope that at least you can enjoy the photos I have posted here.
Stay well!
Eddie
Common Yellowthroat yelling “Witchety, witchety” at me.
Northern Cardinal
Spotted Sandpiper (Actitis macularia) in breeding plumage
Spotted Sandpiper in flight, showing wing and tail markings
No, I still can’t resist getting shots of Tree Swallows!
Eastern Painted Turtle in the water
Eastern Chipmunk
Well-camouflaged grasshopper on wood mulch
A geometrid moth larva, looping.
Spring Azure butterfly on the invasive plant, Garlic Mustard
Spring Azure butterfly from above while feeding
Wild Geranium
I believe this is Corn Speedwell (Veronica arvensis)
See also: ‘Here Be Dragons and Damsels‘ (same location & same day)
A last-minute change of plans took us back to our old stamping ground in Western New York State at the weekend, so I grabbed a couple of hours to re-visit the Tillman Road Wildlife Management Area, at Clarence. The WMA is described by the NYS DEC as “a wet lowland with an emergent marsh, open water, grassy fields, a deciduous swamp and hardwood forest.”
A male Carolina Saddlebags dragonfly
Tillman’s greatest appeal to me, over the last 12-or-so years that I have been a regular visitor, is that one never knows quite what will be found on any visit and ‘drawing a blank’ is rare.
Carolina Saddlebags, rear view to show wing detail
This time, I turned up two new insect species I had never before seen or photographed: a male Carolina Saddlebags dragonfly (Tramea Carolina), and what – to the best of my very limited ability with moths – I believe to be a White Spring moth (Lomographa vestaliata). The latter sat motionless on a leaf, to the extent that I wrongly presumed that it would be some sort of ‘bird dropping moth’ but the former was on high-speed patrol along the margin of a pond and settled only briefly, each time, before doing another lap of its territory.
I believe this to be a White Spring moth
I’ve been very careful in identifying the dragonfly because it is very similar, in both appearance and range, to the Red Saddlebags (T. onusta) but I’m fairly confident I’ve got it right… However, as is always the case on my blogs, if anyone recognizes that I’ve made a mistake please do add a comment below to put me right, and I will correct any error.
The various species of ‘saddlebags’ dragonflies get their name from the dark patches on the inner section of their wings, and when seen – usually in silhouette – from below, this creates an outline that looks like what the name says.
A Red Admiral butterfly, laying an egg
Up where we were, close to Lake Ontario, the Carolina is fairly close to the northern limit of its range, which is over the border in southern Ontario province. Even in this part of New York State, it is further north than its usual breeding range.
Common Blue Violet (Viola sororia)
My other insect of the day was a rather worn-looking Red Admiral butterfly (Vanessa atlanta) which – to my surprise – was laying eggs in low, rough vegetation where I could see no trace of any of the future caterpillars’ necessary food plants. Does a first-brood adult lay eggs randomly around an area in the hope that at least some of their offspring will find suitable food after the plants all grow? Or was this one operating by smell (chemical sensing) and by that means actually knew the right places to leave eggs?
Tree Swallow
As for the other photographs, well I’m always a sucker for violets and I’m not going to walk past a ‘posing’ Tree Swallow, either!