Journal for June 28, 2006

We finally got some rain – 1.6 inches in about a day and a half. Good for the plants, but bad for butterfly watching. Some friends came over to see the butterflies but it rained the whole time they were here.

Here’s one of the storms at the far end of the valley.

I finished weeding the Wild Parsnip from my field in the wetland – it was nice to work on that on a cloudy day. Here’s the result. It doesn’t look very impressive – it just looks like a field now – but before I weeded it had lots of Parsnip. Next week it should have lots of flowers blooming.

I checked on Western Field, but it doesn’t need mowing yet. It’s full of weeds – the usual first year prairie – but it’s still beautiful up there.

When the sun finally came out, after all the storms cleared off, the butterflies came right back. We had worried that grading the driveway had disturbed their habitat, but I guess that’s not a problem. So here are some of the driveway butterflies. (I like looking at these butterflies, and they’re usually very intent on sucking minerals up from the driveway stones so there are lots of pictures.)

Aphrodite Fritillary (front) and Great Spangled Fritillary (behind)

Coral Hairstreak

(left to right) Aphrodite Fritillary, Meadow Fritillary, Silvery Checkerspot

two Great Spangled Fritillaries with two Meadow Fritillaries and a Hackberry Emperor in front

Hackberry Emperor with Meadow Fritillary, flies and Spotted Thyris moths

Hackberry Emperors and Meadow Fritillaries

Tawny Emperor

Summer Azures

I found one neat new insect – a very small day flying moth called a Spotted Thyris (Thyris maculata). Here’s a group of them working on some kind of dead animal on the driveway – most of the animal had decayed except for the smell.

Before the rain the plants were looking pretty dusty and wilted. Afterwards they looked much better, and some new ones are starting to bloom. Here are White and Purple Prairie Clover blooming in the prairie around the house.

White Prairie Clover (Dalea candida)