Miscellaneous Monday

I have quite a few pictures stored on my Compact Flash card and since I didn't have any other ideas for a post tonight, I decided to clean out the memory and share some of these pictures with you.

I'll start with a few photos from about a month ago--over at the little stormwater retention pond I've been visiting frequently this summer. I finally got a good picture of one of the little frogs before it leapt into the water (leopard frog? I think). This guy was really tiny but you can't tell it from this picture......

How about now? Same frog with an oak leaf for better size definition.

I also got this nice picture of an Eastern Comma Butterfly (summer form). This butterfly was loving the moist mud at the edge of the pond.It's hard to get pictures of them as they sit and continually flap their wings--I just keep snapping away and eventually I'm lucky enough to get the shot when its wings are open all the way.

One night last week while doing the dishes, I glanced out the window and there was the Cooper's Hawk--sitting right on the edge of the ground feeding tray (this is the same tray my night-time deer eat corn from). Occasionally I'll see the Cooper's Hawk swoop through the yard and sometimes even find little piles of feathers from a bird it has killed, but I was really delighted to see this one land and sit still long enough for me to snap some (less than ideal) pictures through the window screen. Judging by the color of the breast feathers and dark orange-appearing eye, I'm calling this bird an adult.

My, what big ears you have!!

We saw this little fawn last Saturday night in a hayfield in Fillmore County.

I've started saving water from the air conditioner that I've always previously let run down the drain. I get from 3-4 of these jugs every day and with 8 birdbaths around the yard, this really saves on running water from the tap, plus it's much easier to carry a couple of jugs than the big bucket of water I used to fill from the outside faucet.

When I got home from work this afternoon, I noticed something with black wings flying around in the Swallowtail Ranch jar. "Hmmm, that seems odd, those wings are too small for a swallowtail," I thought to myself.
Upon closer inspection, I realized it wasn't a butterfly at all, but a wasp! How disappointing. This is one of the parasitic wasps (Trogus species). When I found this swallowtail caterpillar and put it in the "ranch" it was almost completely full grown. Here's what my Kaufman Field Guide to insects says about these wasps: "All are internal parasites of caterpillars but emerge as adult wasps from the pupa of the host." Yuck!! The field guide even shows a picture of one of these wasps emerging from the pupa of a swallowtail butterfly. The other swallowtail caterpillar I found was much smaller (the green cocoon you can see in the picture). I hope that one didn't become a victim of one of these wasps too, but I'll find out for sure if (and when) the butterfly emerges from this green cocoon.

Pawprints in the Dirt

Mr. Johnson and I took a walk over to the pond in the woods this evening in hopes of seeing some deer like the doe and fawn he saw last night (when I wasn't along......he always sees the good stuff when he's by himself). We saw only one small buck--a little forkhorn with antlers still in velvet.

The pond is right next to Neighbor Jack's woods--remember back in May when I did the 2-part post about my morning walk in the woods and Neighbor Jack said to keep an eye open for a wolf? Well, check out these pawprints I found tonight.....

They were so huge and to the best of my knowledge, there's no dog this large roaming loose in our neighborhood. However, after I came home and checked with my "Mammals of Minnesota" field guide, here's what it said about coyotes and wolves: "hind paws fall near or directly onto fore prints when walking, often obliterating the forepaw tracks." So much for exciting evidence of a wild animal in the neighborhood, but it still leaves me wondering where that big dog might have come from.....

Saturday Morning Nature Hike-Part 1

Since warblers are still migrating and gas went up to $3.69 last week, I decided to try birding within walking distance of my home (no danger of speeding tickets either!) My neighbor Jack (who lives up at the end of our subdivision) still owns at least 40 acres of property--a lot of which is wooded. I called him on the phone last night to get permission to cross his fence and do some birding, and of course, he graciously said yes. When Mr. Johnson was out for his morning walk, he met up with Jack and they talked a little bit out Jack's wooded acres and a few things Jack wanted Mr. Johnson to tell me to keep an eye open for: a pair of red-headed woodpeckers, a pair of pileated woodpeckers and possibly a wolf! Wow, is that possible? Apparently the DNR has documented the presence of a couple of wolves in that area. On my morning hike today, I saw only 1 pileated woodpecker and no evidence of anything that looked like wolf tracks, but that will be something to keep my eyes open for next time.

So anyway, I didn't get started until about 8:45 and my first destination was the little pond I've shown you in a couple of earlier posts. The developer has resumed road construction activities that will eventually turn this wooded area into another housing subdivision, so the dynamics of this natural area will be changing over the next couple years, but for now, it's still fairly wild--especially down at the end adjoining Jack's wooded acreage.

This little pond is for stormwater runoff. I didn't see any wildlife as I approached the pond, but there were frogs singing and jumping into the water as I approached.

Once I got close to the water, I could see there were millions of tadpoles swimming around in there. See all the black stuff in the water on this picture? Those are tadpoles! I've never seen so many in my life!

Unlike the frogs, the tadpoles weren't bothered by my presence and I managed to capture this little video of them.

We had a little rain shower late last night, so the dirt around the pond edge was still nice and soft and I could see lots of footprints from previous visitors. Here's a perfect little raccoon "handprint."

I also saw this very tiny deer hoofprint. I asked Mr. Johnson if baby deer were being born yet and he didn't think so, he said this tiny hoofprint was probably from one of last year's does (a yearling who was still pretty small).

A couple of cautious frogs allowed me to snap a picture of them.

While I was walking around the pond, I saw lots of little birds flying around the edge of the woods and in the tall weed stems around the pond. These birds included House Wren, Yellow Warbler, Chipping Sparrow, American Goldfinch, American Redstart, Eastern Phoebe and Indigo Bunting.

I finally moved on from the pond and over to the gate that would let me into the woods. Tune in next time as I take you down this wooded trail for Part 2 of the Saturday Morning Nature Hike.