Muddlety's Butterflies

We had very little butterfly weather in West Virginia. Butterfly weather is warm and sunny. When it rains and is cool and misty, butterflies hide away. When the sun peeks out, so do they--it's like magic, like suddenly walking into the movie "Snow White," with butterflies parting in front of you.

I managed to snap a few butterflies in the hour or so of sunshine we enjoyed. Pipevine swallowtails were the most obvious about.
They're distinguished by that bewitching iridescent teal-blue hindwing. Beyond that, the iridescence suffuses the forewing and body. The pipevine swallowtail is one elegant bug.

So we're watching these butterflies puddling (imbibing phosphates and other essential minerals in mud), and this thing that looks like a flying crawfish shows up.
Eek! It's walking on the pipevine! What is it?

Ah. It's a Nessus Sphinx, a kind of hawkmoth, Amphion floridensis. Its brood plant (what the caterpillars eat) is Virginia creeper, grape, or porcelainberry. Lovely.

And exceedingly weird. Here, its forewings are blurred and nearly invisible, enhancing the crawfish similarity.


Not only that, but there's a little bitty microlep, another moth that looks like a miniature. See it just to the left of the giant sphinx? With a dandelion seed for scale? Teeny. Maybe somebody will know what it is, but I'm not holding my breath. All I know about it is: it likes skunkdoo.

On to more wholesome things. Here's Swamp Blue Violet, Viola cucullata. I like the common name of cuckoopint.
A Juvenal's duskywing, dark harbinger of spring. You can tell it from Horace's by the two pale dots on the upper rim of the hindwing.

And for me, the prize of the day (other than spending part of it with Tim Ryan) was a lovely West Virginia White. How appropriate for this rarish little butterfly to show up, nectaring on foamflower, Tiarella cordifolia, at the end of our Muddlety trip.


This lovely little thing is distinguished by its grayish shading on the veins of the underwing. It's a Pieris, like the cabbage white P. rapae, but it's P. virginiensis.

Ahhh. What a nice find.

Misty Morning Birding, Teardrop in My Eye

It usually rains at the end of April and beginning of May in West Virginia. When I was corresponding with other members of the nature blogging Flock about the trip, I advised raingear, lots of it. And this turned out to be a very wet festival.

Which was something to deal with, but not a problem. People who love warblers are happy folks. They kept their sunny attitude.

The flowers were still lovely. Golden ragwort and cranesbill (wild geranium).
The magnificent large tree, Fraser magnolia, Magnolia fraseri.

The birds' colors were a bit compromised by the fog and rain. In sunlight, cerulean warblers are sky blue.


They still sang, if a little less persistently. Their black necklaces were all that distinguished them; their stunning blue backs would have to wait for better light, better days.


It was all very ricepaper and watercolor, very Japanese. Even a male scarlet tanager looked grayish in this light.

Well, it's shaped like a tanager... Photo by Nina.

The direction of light became paramount in getting a decent look at a bird. This northern parula cooperated for a nanosecond, showing his sunny breast.

As we walked, I noticed a female eastern towhee as she burst frantically from the ground. She appeared to have been trying to stay still, then lost her nerve. I knew that meant she was on eggs somewhere nearby. I split from the group and walked carefully along the foot of the bank.

And found the nest, using a laser pointer to show it to the festival participants. Photo by Nina.

Four white eggs, speckled with rust, well hidden in a grassy nest tucked into the bank, under a big multiflora rose. I wish her well.


Some black rat snake eggs were less fortunate. Examining these, I decided that they had been washed out after having been buried by the female snake last summer. The eggshells were unpunctured, but there was nothing inside. So it wasn't a predation event--it was a dessication event.


Red efts (the wandering, terrestrial, juvenile form of the red-spotted newt) were easier subjects than birds.

The smallest red eft I'd ever seen enchanted Nina. I'm sure he'll make an appearance on her blog, Nature Remains.

Katdoc joined her in the photoquest. Katdoc is geared out, full birding plumage.

Nina has ferocious focus. She folded up like a tripod and became one with the newt.


One of Nina's many gifts is looking very closely, and waiting.


Everyone moved on, which is just what Nina needed.

And she became a rock in the road, and captured the eft without touching it.


As Nina and I walked the last bit of Spruce Run Road, loosely known at the festival as Muddlety, we marveled at the abundant life all around us--prairie and blue-winged warblers, chat after yellow-breasted chat, redstarts and hooded warblers, the federally threatened cerulean warbler, scarlet tanagers, and everywhere the flutes of wood thrushes. A tear coursed down Nina's cheek, then another. We had both seen the coal company permit sign about halfway up the road, that, to those who know its significance, means that this entire woodland--all this habitat, all this mountain--is about to be blown up, never to be woodland habitat again.

When you flip a light switch on, there's a 50 percent chance that the energy you're using comes out of what used to be a mountain in West Virginia. Blowing up the richest and most diverse forest in the US--leveling these mountains-- to get the coal underneath it is not a sustainable way to get energy. It is insanity itself. It buries the streams, chokes the rivers and poisons the people. Please, please watch this five-minute video. Maria Gunnoe says it so much better than I ever could. And if you're moved to action, go to the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition web site and see what you can do to stop this abomination. Muddlety probably won't survive, but there are so many more equally beautiful mountains--and communities, streams, rivers and lives-- the coal companies are planning to destroy.

Watch, then go. Keep spending your ecotourism dollars in West Virginia. All profits from the New River Birding Festival go to environmental education in local schools--a slow but, we hope, ultimately effective way to shout STOP THIS MADNESS!! Thank you.

And thank you, Cassandra.

West Virginia Backroads

There's someting to be said for being out all day for three days, just looking and watching. The things you see! I guess I'll get the not-so-pretty things out of the way first. Our group of 20 or so birders was probably the most interesting thing that had happened on a certain gravel back road for some time. We got an escort of kids, each armed with a different weapon, and a pack of dogs. Some looked healthy. Some didn't. Katdoc and I had a hard time with that, a real hard time. Demodectic mange. Awful. Katdoc said that all dogs are born with the mites that cause this horrible affliction, just like we all have mites in our eyelashes and and eyebrows. But some dogs with compromised immune systems succumb to the infestation. Still, there was a dignity and a certain beauty about this miserable dog the boys were calling Jake. I like this photo, heartbreaking as it is.
On the same road, sleepy duskywings were waking up in the unaccustomed sun.Not far away, a blue-winged warbler probed inside the blossoms of a buckeye tree, looking for insects. The scale of the leaves and this inflorescence seems positively tropical. I always love making pictures that tell something of how a bird feeds and lives. This killdeer is at home in riprap, sitting her eggs.You just have to love tree swallows. This little gal has made her home in a decorative house, over a matching mailbox, barely three feet off the ground. So close to habitation, she may just dodge the snakes. I said a little prayer for her and her eggs. You can't put a baffle on every nestbox, Zick.
I'll leave you with another quintessentially West Virginian image--an eastern kingbird, teed up on a gravestone, with lots of silk flowers as a backdrop. Birds lend such grace to any scene. The flycatchers make up in flair what they lack in bright colors. Our first kingbird--a female--arrived today. I hope she starts tugging at the basket of nesting material I put out for her!

Scenes from the Mountain State

An empty coal train rumbles along the New River.

From Thursday until Saturday of last week, we were in Fayetteville, WV, in and around the stunning New River Gorge. This river has cut one deep gash down West Virginia's wooded flank. Something about the gorge scares me; the dizzying heights and fast water don't feel like my natural habitat. It's hard to see the sky. You see little bits and pieces of it. I'm used to big ol' friendly Ohio, with its gently rolling hills and open vistas. But there is an undeniable pull to this place, and it's largely because it's so stuffed with great birds, plants, butterflies and animals. And the people are top-notch, too.
I've worked at the New River Neotropicals Birding and Nature Festival every year for the past five. Gave the first keynote, brought Bill the next year, and we keep coming back. The organizers are old friends by now and we love them dearly. Our kids love their kids and it's like falling off a log to bring them along--they just disappear in a little pack. This festival attracts a really discerning cut of birdwatchers, people who know what they like and know how to find it. They're a blast to bird with. So leading the trips is pretty easy. We just use our ears and eyes and put the scope on as many birds as we can. Easier said than done when you're talking about coy, flitty warblers and 25 participants, but we do our best.An ovenbird cooperates for a moment. Bill puts everyone in the shade when it comes to getting the scope on warblers. I'm like the wife who never learned to drive because her husband does it for her. It takes me Forever to get a warbler in the scope, and it's always gone by the time the next person peeks in.
Chet Baker gets to come, because Opossum Creek Resort is pet-friendly. We gave our little doggie the run of the place, and he went cabin to cabin, checking on people and giving kisses and stumptailed wags wherever he went. When we were out birding, he sat atop the hot tub cover, watching chipmunks by the hour.Catdog. He walks on windowsills and the backs of couches; he leaps lightly atop tables and pads softly on ledges. Baker got to meet Katdoc, and I finally got to spend some time with my online buddy. What fun it was! She's the coolest, and rumor has it she will be starting her own blog before too long. I'm ready!We took the kids along on field trips on Friday, and they were terrific, amusing themselves for swix hours without a whine.With things like masses of puddling pipevine swallowtails to watch, who couldn't be happy?
Probably the sexiest bird in the Gorge is the one most birders have yet to add to their life lists: the Swainson's warbler. It's limited to the great laurel thickets along streams, where its clear, ringing whistle sings, "Screw you! Screw the world!" It's darned hard to see, and it seems to be taunting you as you peer into the dark tangles. Pretty much the only way to get 20 or 30 birders on this lovely creature is by playing a tape of its song. You play the song twice and shut the player off. If the bird is going to respond, it will respond instantly, and often sit right out on a bare limb, singing. We had our target bird by 7:18 AM and all laughed and said we wanted to go back to bed. Maybe smoke a cigarette. Ahhh. Life birds are sooo sweet, and six people in my group got to do the Life Bird wiggle.
Naturally, my best shot happened when the bird's head was turned. Buck fever strikes again.I got a life butterfly: an Appalachian azure. I didn't realize it was perched on a dead crawdad until I saw this shot on the screen. This is a lovely, silvery blue beast, way too big to be a spring azure, almost the size of a sulfur. Wow! I was befuddled, then thrilled. Wiggle, wiggle.
Got the garden planted, down to the beans and tomatoes, today. I'm wiped out. Two days hard labor in the sun, not stopping for anything. I could get used to it.