The birds and the moths

Matt's snagged a few cocoons over the last couple of months in the hope of seeing a butterfly or moth emerge. So far, we've hatched two giant silkworm moths -- we think they are promethea moths. The first to emerge was a male, which we determined by the enormous antennae that he uses to detect the pheremones sent out by female moths -- supposedly a male promethea will travel more than a mile to get to a female he's detected. We took several dozen pictures and let him go.

A couple of days later a female emerged -- redder than the male, and with smaller antennae. These moths don't eat -- they don't even have mouth parts -- so we didn't feel too guilty about putting her in an aquarium on the porch to see if we could attract some males. First day, nothing happened. In the afternoon of the second day, Matt came rushing into the kitchen: we've got moths! There were two males frantically trying to get into the cage. A third one came along not too much later, with tattered wings.

We opened up the aquarium but the males didn't go in, so we took the female out -- but then she flew away. A robin quickly went for her, but the moth got away. Did she make it? We'll only know if we see her crazy-looking progeny, lime green with many bright neon horns, later this spring...

moth mobile

Check out the antennae on this guy.

Three males attracted to the female.

The female just before she flew off.

Nectar from the sky

Last June we met a guy named Doug Elliott who told us about drinking nectar from tulip poplar trees. They produce more nectar than any other plant in North America, at about a third of a teaspoon per flower. We had often noticed the lovely flowers of this tree -- but usually only once they've fallen to the ground, because they grow high up in the trees.

Doug told us about the nectar after the flowers were done producing last year, and we pretty much forgot about it until this week, when we were out walking in Rock Creek Park. There were droplets on some spicebush leaves and we thought, that can't be dew -- it's 3:00 on a sunny afternoon! We looked up, and sure enough, there was a tulip tree rising high above. So we gave it a tentative taste. Wow! Pure concentrated sweetness. We spent the rest of the afternoon with our eyes open for droplets on low-down leaves. And when we came to the knocked-down tulip tree that we've been using as a bridge across Rock Creek, sure enough, there were flowers with droplets of nectar in them.

Not dew.

If you look closely you can see the drops of nectar on the inside of the petals.

bridge

Who Cooks For You? Who Cooks For You All?

We went hiking in and around Shenandoah National Park with Matt's Dad this weekend. The first order of business was looking for morels -- the first mushrooms of the year. Then we had a great walk up Little Devil's Staircase through a canyon full of spring wildflowers. But, the most incredible thing was when we came across several owls hooting right along the edge of the trail. One was under some brush and seemed injured. He eventually flew off, but only after several minutes of us checking each other out. We still can't believe we actually held a wild, but docile barred owl. And, knowing what we know now (that owls sometimes play injured as a defense mechanism) we probably wouldn't have done it. But it was doing a pretty convincing job of looking injured.


Wild columbine showing off.


A victim of our somewhat bountiful morel hunt





Elizabeth's turn.


Those huge dark eyes are pretty intense.

Matt and Art climbing (a small part of) Little Devil's Staircase

Wild columbine showing off.

A victim of our somewhat bountiful morel hunt

Elizabeth's turn.

Close up. No trick photography here. Honest.

Matt and Art climbing (a small part of) Little Devil's Staircase