The View from My Deer Stand - Part 2

Spent another deerless afternoon in the woods today, but I'm not complaining because the outside temp was almost 60 degrees! Pretty unusual for early November and it got me to thinking about some previous deer hunting seasons where there was about a foot of snow on the ground and temps in the teens.

Here's the hill I walk down from the cornfield to get to today's deer stand. Pretty, isn't it? There are always lots of birds in this area because it's much more wooded than the stand I was sitting on yesterday.

This stand is a permanent stand (meaning we don't take it down every year). I built this stand myself 2 years ago. Are you impressed? I was. Mr. Johnson had chosen the tree and I was in charge of the design. I did my drawing of how I thought the stand should be built, took the measurements, and then cut all the wood at home. We carried all the pieces out to the woods and then I built the stand. Amazingly enough, all the pieces fit correctly and the stand turned out exactly as I had envisioned it. I love this stand! It's big enough to set up this little stool and today I was even able to curl up on the floor and take a little nap! (Nope, I'm definitely not a hardcore deer hunter, am I?)

The warm weather has brought out a new hatch of insects. I watched this little stink bug walking up one of the tree trunks.

Of course, there are always several of these pesty little bushy tails wreaking havoc in the woods. I'm always amazed at how much noise such a small animal can make. But on a slow deer hunting day, their antics are always amusing.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Summer Volunteer Project

To retain my Master Naturalist certification, I'm required to complete a minimum of 40 volunteer service hours. The Monarch Larva Monitoring Project is one of the ways I've been obtaining my volunteer hours. Every Wednesday evening, a small number of dedicated volunteers head over to the Payne Field near Rochester's Quarry Hill Nature Center to look for monarch eggs and caterpillars. In the photo below, my buddy Dave begins his search. Dave is also a fellow Master Naturalist volunteer and bluebird enthusiast. We met years ago when he first moved to Rochester and I was working at Wild Birds Unlimited. It's been fun spending time with him again on volunteer projects at Quarry Hill and Master Naturalist events.

Here's Lucille and her two children on the monarch quest. They ride over on their bikes every week, but Lucille admitted to me last week that she's enjoying this project much more than the kids are.

Every week, we fill out a checklist indicating what we find in the field. We tally each plant that's inspected and if eggs or caterpillars are found, that's also tallied. The caterpillars are also categorized by size: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th instar. Here on my clipboard is a lovely 5th instar I found during the monitoring. (This caterpillar went home with me, turned into a chrysalis the next day and I'm now waiting for it to emerge as a monarch butterfly.)

The first few weeks of monitoring in June were great -- the milkweed plants were taller than the surrounding grass and it was easy to get through the field. Now look at it! Some of the grasses and weeds are almost up to my chin! I have to be pretty careful bending over to inspect the milkweed plants lest I get poked in the eye or ear by some foxtails or wild parsnip.

As I've mentioned before, the low numbers of monarch eggs, larva and even butterflies has been disappointing. But there are plenty of other insect sightings in this field to keep things interesting. Lately I've been seeing lots of milkweed beetles doin' the "wild thing," but this is the only time I've ever seen this particular position........and I just couldn't resist taking a picture!

Looks pretty precarious to me, but I guess even beetles like a little variety!

I'm happy to report that my monarch butterfly tagging kit finally arrived in today's mail. My monarch ranch has at least one butterfly scheduled to emerge from its chrysalis early next week, and I hope to share a "how to tag a monarch butterfly" post with you then, so stay tuned!

Mostly Insects

If you don't like bugs much, you'll want to skip today's post, but for everyone else, I've got a good variety of some insects to share with you that I've seen in the last few days. (Remember, you can click on any of these pictures to get a super-sized look at them!)

Last Thursday, we went out to the woods again to check and move the trail cameras. During our hike through the woods, I almost stepped into this 'foot-sized' hole filled with yellowjackets. YIKES! I was following Mr. Johnson and he must have walked right past it. Of course, I had to stop and try to figure out what these insects were doing. Because I didn't want to get too close, I counted on my zoom for a better look. It appeared that all of these yellowjackets were swarming on something, but I couldn't tell what (poop? a small dead animal?) My insect field guide says that the Eastern Yellowjacket (common in Minnesota) nests underground (usually in abandoned rodent burrows).
I had a short video clip to download also, but Blogger is feeling contrary tonight and I'll have to try that another time.


On our way back to the car, I almost stepped on this spider web right next to the crushed rock road. My insect field guide only has one page of spiders, but I'm guessing this is some sort of garden spider. It was quite large!
The web is quite visible due to the fact that it's coated with dust from all the car traffic kicking up dust on the road.


We went down again yesterday morning to check the cameras and I spotted this Eastern Comma Butterfly basking in the sun on a soybean plant.
Fortunately my patience paid off and I was able to get a wonderful picture of this butterfly with its wings open. I found out from my field guide that this is the "winter form" of coloring for the Eastern Comma. In the summer, their hindwing is almost entirely black.

Mr. Johnson brought me something special from his afternoon walk today. I had Sophie out in the backyard for a walk and I saw him go up on the deck and holler into the house for me. "I'm over here," I yelled back at him from the yard and I could see he had something in his hand. "C'mere, look at what I found for you," he said. I was thinking maybe a toad or something, but he was clutching a handful of leaves with this creature crawling on top.

Know what it is? I didn't but it was pretty huge and gross looking, so I figured maybe it was a caterpillar for a large butterfly or moth. I googled "caterpillar identification" and found the "what's this caterpillar" site that showed pictures of a similar caterpillar for the Pandora Sphinx Moth. Then I googled that name and found out more about the Pandora Sphinx Moth on Wikipedia.
I gotta tell ya, Mr. Johnson never ceases to amaze me......nothin' says "Love" like bringing a giant caterpillar home, does it?

And just to confirm what a swell guy he is, take a look at this early birthday present he got for me. I have one of those awful birthdays ending in a "ZERO" coming up in a few weeks and he wanted to get me something special that would keep my mind off the actual birthday by distracting me with something I would really enjoy. I didn't even have to hint very much for this.....

Thanks Honey Bunny! You are THE MAN!

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And for all of you who have placed a bid on my hat for auction (or are still thinking about placing a bid), please click on this link for Kristy's blog and look at all the hats she's received--820!! What a tremendous response.

Father's Day 2008

Happy Father's Day to my dad and all the other dads out there! This Father's Day was a perfect, almost-summer day for us here in SE Minnesota. Most of my day was spent outside and in the backyard, the baby robins are fledging. Here's a little one that made it as far as Mr. Johnson's trailer. I love its little downy feather "halo."
As has become our family tradition, Father's Day was celebrated at Forestville State Park near where my parents live in Fillmore County. We didn't know whether we'd be able to have our celebration here this year as there was lots of flooding in the park during this past week. However, the floodwaters have receded and things were looking pretty good. Here's a picture of my brother Dave walking over to look at the river (just past him you can see the far riverbank and a little bit of the river).You can see how the vegetation has been pushed almost flat by the force of the water. As near as we could tell, the water was probably at least 8-10 feet above the normal water level and we could see that there had been probably 2 feet of water in the picnic shelter (which is about 50 yards away from the river).

However, there were still lots of beautiful sights to enjoy and I was able to take plenty of pictures to share with you.

Last year at this picnic shelter, we found a phoebe nest right near the entrance. It was the first thing I looked for again this year and sure enough, she had a nest in almost the same location.It was pretty high, but thanks to my sissy's sturdy cooler, I was able to reach inside and count 5 little eggs.

Here's Mrs. Phoebe perched on the light near her nest.
And Mrs. Phoebe on the nest incubating her eggs. She was very quiet and didn't seem at all alarmed by our presence. I hope she's able to raise her little family without incident.

On the outside of the picnic shelter (right up under the eaves), I found this little brown bat taking a nap. I know a lot of people don't like bats, but isn't this just the cutest little face?

There were so many butterflies out today. I got to see my first Red Spotted Purple! What a gorgeous butterfly! Its colors were so brilliant, I wondered if it was newly hatched from the cocoon.
There were also some Giant Swallowtails flying around. Brother Dave had to tell me what this butterfly was and I managed to "almost" get a decent picture. I can see I still have lots of work to do on my butterfly ID skills.
The Solomon's Seal were blooming all over along one of the trails we explored.
We spotted this sweet little female American Redstart on the old bridge leading to the historic buildings at this park.She wasn't fearful of humans at all and appeared to be concentrating on trying to collect spider webs and little bits of flood debris still hanging on the bridge. Does anyone know if Redstarts use spiderwebs as part of their nests?

Along one of the trails near the river, we also spotted this Ebony Jewelwing (watching me watch her). The white spots in the wing indicate she's a female.
Here's a beautiful little beetle we saw on the sidewalk to the picnic shelter.It looks like the Six-Spotted Tiger Beetle in my Kaufman insect field guide, but I can't see any spots. I think Brother Dave told me the name of this beetle, but as usual, I forgot.

So those are the highlights of my day and once again, I've run out of day before I got everything done. It's going to be a long and busy week at work and I've got to get this post finished up soon and get to bed. Hope you all have a great week and get a chance to enjoy some nature in your backyard and beyond.