Birds and more bugs, but no bucks…

I almost didn’t go out this morning. I was on a bike ride on the Oak Leaf trail yesterday when the Canada wildfire smoke rolled in, and at 7:30 this morning, two full hours after sunrise, I had to turn on a light to read the paper. Then my friend, Lisa, texted about a turtle trying to cross the road from the pond, and a good breeze out of the west soon cleared the skies, so I couldn’t resist.

At first, it was just another beautiful morning for a walk in the park, but I wasn’t getting many pictures. Oh, sure, the indigo bunting was in his usual spot at the south end, and the sky behind him was nearly the same color, …

the great egret was back, after a brief absence, …

and even the osprey, whom we haven’t seen in a while, did a flyby, …

but the main event, at least for me, occurred north of the northern island as I was scanning the sandbars for the yellowlegs. It started with this very fresh-looking mourning cloak, who kept its wings closed at first, …

but then relaxed enough to open them up for us. Wow!

Then, nearly in the same spot, this gorgeous question mark (yes, that’s its real name) parked on an exposed slab of the Milwaukee formation to soak up some sun. They are very similar to the eastern comma, which we’ve seen already this season, but I don’t see them nearly as often. Sadly, this one did not give me an opportunity to capture its namesake punctuation.

Then the magic really started when this beauty flew in, perhaps to sip moisture from the river mud while also soaking up some sun. It took a while to settle down, and I thought I had lost it a couple of times, but then it finally parked and let me take this portrait. I didn’t think I had ever seen one before, and sure enough, from the comfort of my dining room table, I looked it up to find that it is our very first hackberry emperor (Asterocampa celtis). I read that they are so-named because the common hackberry tree (Celtis occidentalis) “is the only host plant” and “food source for [its] larvae.”

As if three beautiful butterflies, including a brand-new species to us, were not enough, the mostly-white argillaceous dolomite also attracted this stunner, our very first eastern pondhawk (Erythemis simplicicollis) and “arguably the most aggressive of the dragonflies that live in the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area!”

Oh, and speaking of dragonflies, one of the pictures from yesterday that I couldn’t squeeze into the post was this male widow skimmer. We’ve seen females pretty regularly, but this is only the second male I’ve managed to get on film.

Okay, that’s probably enough bugs for one day for some readers, so let’s wrap this up with a nice portrait of an eclipse male wood duck on a branch over the pond from yesterday.