Summer visitors #phenology

This morning, as we were going and coming through the garage to exchange one tool for another, we kept disturbing a "black" butterfly. We think it was a red-spotted purple also known as white admiral. We've seen each variant on the driveway at different times, especially when there's muddy spots they seem to feed at.

white admiral butterfly

Photo by J. Harrington

red-spotted purple butterfly

Photo by J. Harrington

Purple finches, at least that's who we think they are, have returned to the feeders, along with the usual suspects of goldfinches, woodpeckers, cardinals, grosbeaks, etc. Our location is in this bird's Winter range and only a little bit South of its breeding range. The folks at Cornell note that:

This species moves very erratically from year to year, so if you don’t have them this year, there’s always a chance they’ll arrive next year.

purple finch at sunflower feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

We're sorry to report that our latest effort at pocket gopher trapping was an unmitigated failure. Once again the critter seems to have buried the traps without springing them or getting caught. Time for some remedial studies and a more careful inspection of where main tunnels may be relative to the mounds of earth gophers pile up. We have never attained the proficiency at these assessments that we would like to have, but the extra digging does give us exercise we would otherwise forego.

Again today we note our gratitude that yesterday's tornados passed to our North and to our South. They also missed the homes of the Daughter Person and Son-In-Law and that of the S-I-L's mother, although it got more exciting than any of us needed.

Butterflies

By Samuel Green

Some days her main job seems to be

to welcome back the Red Admiral

as it lights on a leaf of the yellow

forsythia. It is her duty to stop & lean

over to take in how it folds & opens

its wings. Then, too, there is the common

Tiger Swallowtail, which seems to her

entirely uncommon in how it moves

about the boundaries of this clearing

we made so many years ago. If she leaves

the compost bucket unwashed to rescue

a single tattered wing from under the winter

jasmine or the blue flowers of the periwinkle

& then spends a whole afternoon at our round

oak table surrounded by field guides

& tea until she is sure—yes—that it belongs to

a Lorquin's Admiral, or that singular

mark is one of the great cat's eyes

of a Milbert's Tortoiseshell, then she is

simply practicing her true vocation

learning the story behind the blue beads

of the Mourning Cloak, the silver commas

of the Satyr Anglewing, the complex shades

of the Spring Azure, moving through this life

letting her sweet, light attention land

on one luminous thing after another.

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