The Great Horned Owl

Some people call great horned owls "hoot owls" for their famous calls. Click here to listen to a recording from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

The great horned owl is native to the Americas and is widely distributed across the United States. You can find them from old-growth forests to suburbs and even in city parks. Click on the photo to enlarge and check out its bark-like camouflage.

Great horned owls are big birds with a wingspan of from three to five feet. Their "horns" are tufts of feathers. Note the big strong feet for grasping prey -- stylishly feathered!

Happy Halloween

I guess owls are associated with Halloween because they are nocturnal and make spooky sounds in the dark. They can startle you, too, if they suddenly swoop past on silent wings.

The eastern screech-owl, Megascops asio, pictured above, is tiny -- only about the size of a robin, but it can definitely make spooky sounds. If you live in a shady suburb or near a city park -- any place in the eastern US where there are big trees for sitting and open areas for hunting -- you might have screech owl neighbors and not know it. UNTIL you are dozing off on a summer night with the windows open and hear their weird warbling whinny sounds outside. Click here to listen to recordings from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. 

Eastern screech-owls come in two colors, the gray shown here and reddish brown. Regardless of color the patterns of both look like tree bark and are excellent camouflage. Click on the photos to enlarge.

The owl model for the photos above is a resident wildlife ambassador at the Cedar Run Wildlife Refuge in Medford, New Jersey.  I took the photos during one of the occasional raptor photography sessions they host. Click here to visit the refuge's website to learn about the good work they do.
The owl is so small it fits perfectly on its handler's gloved index finger. Darned cute.

October

Autumn is my favorite season. Here is an autumn poem by one of my favorite poets, Rainer Maria Rilke, translated from German by another of my favorite poets, Robert Bly.

October Day

Oh Lord, it's time. It was a great summer. 

Lay your shadow now on the sundials,

and on the open fields let the winds go! 

Give the tardy fruits the command to fill;

give them two more Mediterranean days,

drive them on into their greatness, and press

the final sweetness into the heavy wine. 

Whoever has no house by now will not build. 

Whoever is alone now, will remain alone,

will wait up, read, write long letters,

and walk along sidewalks under large trees,

not going home, as the leaves fall and blow away.  

Click to enlarge.

Going to Miss the Butterflies

As autumn begins and the days grow cold, butterflies disappear from the north. Some migrate away, some pupate to emerge next spring, others leave eggs, and some overwinter as dormant adults. I'll miss the butterflies; they are one of the best things about summer. Here are some of the beautiful butterflies of the summer of 2019. Click to enlarge, a monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus.

An orange sulphur butterfly, Colias eurytheme.

A buckeye, Junonia coenia.

A summer azure, Celastrina neglecta.

A black swallowtail, Papilio polyxenes -- the state butterfly of New Jersey!

A variegated fritillary, Euptoieta claudia.

An American lady butterfly, Vanessa virginiensis.

A spicebush swallowtail, Papilio troilus.

An eastern tiger swallowtail, Papilio glaucus.

A red-spotted purple butterfly, Limenitis arthemis, hanging upside down from a butterfly bush blossom showing off the red spots on its lower surface.

Bye butterflies! Turning my attention to the anticipation of the pretty things of autumn.

Stinging Rose Caterpillars

This is a stinging rose caterpillar, Parasa indetermina.  It's one of the fanciest and prettiest caterpillars ever. I saw a few of them on bayberry bushes by the side of a path at Cape May Point, New Jersey, last week. Click to enlarge. 

The last time I saw a stinging rose caterpillar was almost exactly nine years ago to the day and in the exact same spot at Cape May Point, and on bayberry leaves. Stinging rose caterpillars come in green, yellow, and orange; the ones I saw that time were all orange. I wrote a blog about it then.  Click here to read it.

This time I saw only yellow ones.  If this is a trend, I guess I can expect to see a group of green ones in that spot in 2028. They are very pretty in any color and exciting to find. If you see one, or pretty much any caterpillar covered with spikes and spines, don't touch. They don't call them stinging rose caterpillars for nothing.

Pine Barrens Gentians

I am feeling smug about having found rare pine barrens gentians. These blue autumn flowers are natives of North American coastal pine barrens from South Carolina to New Jersey. This patch was growing beside a bog near Chatsworth, New Jersey.

Some people think the pine barrens gentian is the most beautiful native flower in New Jersey.  Click to enlarge.

Love the dots on the petals like fairy dust.

The flower bud looks to me like an Art Nouveau vase. 

I found an even more rare pink one!

This one is being visited by a common branded skipper moth, Hesperia comma.

Pine barrens gentians bloom from September through early November. They are likely to sprout up in areas that have been disturbed by fire or other things.

Gentian hunting is a great excuse to take a walk in the pine barrens. It's time.

Praying Mantis

Here are some of the praying mantises of the summer of 2019.

This one is doing a good job of blending in.

Watching me. Click to enlarge.

A poem by Ogden Nash: 

From whence arrived the praying mantis? 

From outer space or lost Atlantis?

glimpse the grin, green metal mug

at masks the pseudo-saintly bug,

Orthropterous, also carnivorous,

And faintly whisper, Lord deliver us. 

The other day a mantis appeared on one of my windows. I took its picture, just a silhouette without the usual tangled background of leaves. It was easy to isolate with Photoshop to make graphics like this one. Reminds me of the Karate Kid in this pose.

And this. Gotta love a little mantis art, right?