Bird Babies

Where to begin... at the beginning, I suppose...
I have been expecting the baby robins to fledge any day now for the last few days, and when I saw that they were still in the nest when I got home last night just before dark, I figured today would be the day. When I got up today, I peeked out the front door and didn't see any little beaks poking above the nest. I looked around for the adult robins, and didn't see any, so I chanced getting up to look in the nest, and as expected, it was empty. It was a nice moment, thinking about the little birds flying off, but I was a little sorry I missed it. Still, it was also a happy moment because it means I can use my front door again, and walk around in front of my house, or so I thought. When I then went out to get the mail (through the back door, just because of recently acquired habit), I brought my camera in case I saw any interesting bugs, and on my way to the mailbox I detoured onto the walkway to the front door. Well, Mother and Father Robin were nearby, and they were NOT happy. They scolded, and the swooped. They were even MORE unhappy when I walked in front of the porch. They didn't chill out until I went down the driveway, and then when I came back up the driveway, they continued to complain and swoop at me. I understand why; when baby robins fly for the first time, they are really just flying out of the nest to the ground–they aren't really ready for real flight yet. They don't even have the right feathers for it yet. They will spend the next couple of weeks living on the ground, as fledglings. Their parents will continue to feed them and look after them. Apparently, the fledglings are still in the vicinity of the front porch, and maybe aren't even all in the same spot. So I am STILL not allowed to walk around right in front of my porch, but the parents have expanded the no-walk zone, and I don't know where the boundaries are. I'm feeling pretty put out about this. I was nice enough to let them use my porch for a month, and THIS is how they thank me? I provide a safe place for them to build a nest AND a perfect habitat for bugs, which means they can find food for their young, and I get NO gratitude? Hmph.

Meanwhile, in another nest in another part of the backyard:

 These pictures are hard to see and interpret, because of where the nest is, but... for a couple of weeks now I have been keeping an eye on a mourning dove on her nest, wondering when the babies would hatch, and today I realized that they had hatched ages ago! That's not the mother bird you see up there, that is one of the babies (of which I think there are two).

 When I looked today there was a bird sitting on the edge of the nest, and it was a pretty normal looking mourning dove except really small, and I realized that it is one of the babies. I could also see the mother, the back half of her, and when I moved to get another look from a different angle, I saw another baby. And the funny thing is, a few days ago when I looked up there, I could see the mother, and what looked like another eye looking down at me, but it was hard to tell what I was seeing, because it's in a cedar tree and there is a debris-filled spider web right underneath the nest. But I thought I must just be seeing things weirdly, because why would the mother be on the nest with a baby? And yet, for a while now, when I have seen her up there she must have been up there with these two chicks. And I have not seen the male at all, but he must have been coming and bringing food, because the chicks have obviously been fed. Later in the afternoon I checked again, and the mother was not there, but I could see the two chicks. It was all very surprising.

 And in OTHER Backyard Bird Activities:

 I saw something big moving through the trees, and when I moved to get a better look I saw this take flight. It landed where you see it, on the post of the garden fence (very near to the mourning doves' nest). Before I saw it there were a lot of birds making quite a racket in the trees. I think they were telling it to go away.

Have a closer look.

Today was kind of a mixed bag in the backyard. It was HOT (back into the 90s), I walked face-first into about a million spiderwebs, I missed a LOT of shots of bugs, mostly because of my own clumsiness, but sometimes because they just flew away before I got my shot, and there were a lot of gypsy moth caterpillars around, which is depressing. And for a while, I didn't think I was going to find any bugs at all that I could get a decent picture of. And I was feeling guilty about not blogging the last two days (which wasn't completely my fault; there was rain, and I was out all day yesterday. And I should cut myself some slack–I did do a blog on Saturday, and I had a fever of 100.8º that day), and like my slackerism justified the horrible time I was having. Also, I would swear I could SEE the pollen in the air. It was miserable. But, I started to find bugs, I saw three species of butterflies (and got pictures of none), the sun was shining, lots of birds were singing, and, well, my backyard is beautiful. It's hard not to enjoy being out there.

Before we get to the bugs for today...

This chipmunk spent about a minute or so clinging here, I think under the impression that I could not see it if it didn't move. I spent most of my life not knowing that chipmunks climb trees, so that now it still strikes me as surprising when I see one do so. This one didn't continue up, though. When I walked around the other side of the trees, it scurried back down to the ground and into the underbrush.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

 Katydid nymph. I have been on the lookout for these because the clematis are starting to bloom, and in the past I have sometimes seen them on clematis blooms, so it means they must be around at the same time.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

 Caterpillar, I think of some kind of hairstreak butterfly. I couldn't figure out which one, though–none of the pictures in my book really looked like this one, and several of the species apparently have multiple variations, not all of which were pictured.

Some species of hairstreak caterpillars have a deal with ants–the ants guard the caterpillars from predators, particularly parasitoid wasps, which like to lay their eggs inside live caterpillars, and the caterpillars provide their ant guards with food, in the form of a sugary secretion. Same kind of deal that the ants have with the aphids, although it does seem in this case less like the ants are farming the sugar secreters. According to Caterpillars of Eastern North America by David L. Wagner, some species of hairstreak caterpillars even have a way of summoning ants to them by tapping on plants. There was quite a bit of interesting information about the relationship between these caterpillars and ants in that book–I can't put it all here, but if you ever get a chance, read up on it. Nature is weird.

There were several of these caterpillars on the same bush, dining on the flower buds. I spotted the first one because it was obvious as it lay across the top of the flower cluster, but the others I found only because I saw piles of frass on the leaves of the plant, and knew from that sign to look for caterpillars in the flower clusters above those leaves.

Other Bugs:

There was a LOT of these caterpillars dangling from the trees today.

 Two different instars of gypsy moth caterpillars. I squished them after I took this picture. I know it sounds horrible and hypocritical, since I am always saying not to kill bugs, but these are so destructive. I would never kill one if I saw it in its native habitat, but they can't be allowed here. A couple of days ago we were driving down the highway in an area that was hit hard by gypsy moth caterpillars the last two years. I was enjoying the beautifully leafed-out trees lining the highway, but amongst all of the greenery were a lot of bare trees. Dead trees. Trees that were defoliated by the gypsy moths the last two summers, when they were already stressed by a couple of years of drought. Trees that were killed by gypsy moths. In some spots it was just individual trees, but in others there were clusters of trees that were killed. This is what gypsy moths do here.

 This is the second damselfly I have seen this year, and the first I was able to photograph. Pity I couldn't get a better photograph, but hey, that's why this is so frustrating! It's a beautiful insect, though, and that's why this is so gratifying.

 Winter fireflies get that name because you can see them in the winter, but they are not only around in the winter. They are a little harder to find now, but they are still around.

 Huge fly in the leaf litter

And, back to the subject of ants and their aphid livestock...

 Notice the variety of sizes of the aphid nymphs.

 The tree growing out of the back porch has several little "ant farms" on it.

 It's hard to tell, but I think this lady beetle has caught an aphid.

I found a tree that has several leaves being devoured by these sawfly larvae:

 It looks a bit like a cucumber with legs and eyes. And it has a bit of frass caught on its back.

 There were a couple of moths waiting for us on the back porch when we got home in the evening.

 I have seen quite a lot of moths of this style, but none so small. This one was probably less than half an inch long.

 

 

 Plume moth

Arachnid Appreciation:
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Last night as I was working on my computer, I happened to glance over toward my husband's chair, and saw this huge spider on the floor next to it. There are a lot of spiders living in this house, and we coexist happily, but a spider this big belongs outside. So, I had to capture it (after I took a picture, of course), but it turned out to be too big for my bug vacuum. I had to use the old-fashioned method of putting a container over it and sliding a piece of cardboard underneath. I released it this morning, when I could get better pictures (of course):

 It's not tarantula levels of huge, but this is a huge spider for this area.

 

 Daddy-long-legs. Reminder: this is not a spider.

 

I've always thought this kind of jumping spider looks like The Lorax. This picture was taken less than a second before it jumped on my camera lens. I have learned to recognize when they are about to jump, but I am not always fast enough to avoid it anyway.