WildwingsBirds and Outdoor Issues as I see them

Habitat and its importance have been trumpeted in this space for years now. We’ve shown how intertwined plant and animal species are with their place in the world, with an emphasis on bird life. Last weekend I was reminded that it works for butterflies too.

Most people don’t see butterflies beyond what shows up to feed on the nectar of the flowers they might have in their yards. Yet whole suites of butterflies exist out there beyond our concrete and dandelion jungles. Walk through a grassland sometime and you’ll see skippers and fritillaries and wood nymphs, species you won’t get in your normal backyard. And enter the trees; again entire families of unfamiliar butterflies emerge from the dappled shadows to the delight of seekers.

I happen to spot this eastern comma (Polygonia comma) last weekend and realized I hadn’t seen one yet this year. This species is one from the family Nymphalidae, otherwise known as the brushfoots. It includes lots of familiar ones like monarch, red admiral, and pearl crescent. Why brushfoot? So called because of the reduced foreleg pairs, which gives them an almost 4-legged appearance.

Here’s a hint for attracting unusual butterflies to your place: think food, but think outside the box. Most folks are unaware that many butterfly species feed not on nectar, but on rotting fruit, tree sap, and dung. Yes, dung. With little effort I usually put out some used watermelon or cantalope rinds. Inevitably commas, red admirals, mourning cloaks and other non-nectar feeders find them. Kinda cool. The other popular spot which might be hard to replicate is a rather large cut branch from a certain tree of mine suffering from fire blight. The cut oozes sap and the brushfoots congregate daily. Amazing stuff.

It wasn’t until I got home and was clicking through the photos I’d taken Saturday that I happened to notice something (isn’t digital photography great?). My intention was to capture an image of a “spittle” mass created by, you guessed it, spittlebugs.

Reviewing the photo with a little more scrutiny, though, exposed a pair of other bugs, or rather weevils. It doesn’t take much to figure out the insects are engaged in an, ahem, activity which will ultimately produce little weevils.

As to which species, well, again I turned to the experts. But alas, I got no definitive answer. Everyone wants a specimen to look at in hand.

But I received “likely” guesses from arguably one of the best entomologists in the nation. And get this, he even took a stab at the spittlebug ID.

Within the frothy mass itself is likely the diamond-backed spittlebug (Lepyronia quadrangularis) according to Dr. F. The weevils– he thinks–are sweetclover weevils (Sitona cylindricollis). They are on sweet clover after all.

I would only add one thing: Don’t ever bet against Dr. F, the guy is amazing.

Consider this the all-bug station, at least for this week.

Last week I briefly walked a Nature Conservancy site southwest of Fargo and was blown away by the number of dragonflies. There were thousands, mostly dot-tailed whitefaces. I can’t recall seeing such density ever in my life. The morning was cool which kept the insects quite docile and approachable so viewing was ideal.

Last weekend I ran into some south of Fargo but not nearly as many. Still there were some beauties.

Here’s a female 12-spotted skimmer (Libellula pulchella). Most photos of this species depict males with alternating white-and-dark spots. I suppose it’s akin to birders who fancy males over females merely for their visual appeal.

Dot-tailed whitefaces (Leucorrhinia intacta) were not nearly as well represented Saturday. Still I happened to see a few, including this one. The white face is barely visible at the far anterior portion of its face. Oh, and the spot in the tail is obvious too.

The only other species I was able to snap a shot of was this one, a four-spotted skimmer (Libellula quadrimaculata), which was probably the most commonly encountered dragon last Saturday.

When I first encountered this beetle south of Fargo last weekend I thought it might be a scarab given its bright metallic exoskeleton. Upon watching it and observing its stance and behavior, however, it became clear this was one of the tiger beetles. But which one?

Thankfully a friend of mine has spent years studying tiger beetles. Naturally I turned to him for the identification. Wham! He instantly pegged it as a six-spotted tiger beetle. In Pat’s own words…

“This little beauty is a six-spotted tiger beetle (Cicindela sexguttata). It’s a widespread species, but this is about as far northwest as it occurs. Ours have the spots on the elytra greatly reduced and sometimes even absent. I’ll have to head down there and collect a few – I don’t have any from Cass Co., though I do have them from Clay in MN, Richland, Sargent and Ransom in ND, and Roberts in SD. Ours like riparian/moist woods habitat with dark soil.”

All well and good. But it left me wondering what an “elytra” was. It’s been nearly 30 years since my entomology class so the word escaped me. Dictionary.com told me it’s a plural form of elytron, which means: “one of the pair of hardened forewings of certain insects, as beetles, forming a protective covering for the posterior or flight wings.” In other words, it’s the part that makes up the bulk of the visual part of a beetle as we see them.

Just another reminder there is more out there in the wild than we lay folk can imagine. Not that insect viewing will ever rise to the level of bird watching for me, but when the birding is slow, there are options.

Saturday afternoon I walked a piece of woods south of Fargo with little bird fanfare. Species counts were low and singing was even slow (although it was the afternoon).

What did catch my eye, though, was the insect life, which was abundant. This time I’m not talking about mosquitoes either.

There was just about one female monarch butterfly in every patch of common milkweed, including this one. She looks a little haggard so is likely a migrant. I watched her for a bit then approached the spot where she had been sitting. Sure enough, she had placed a single egg on a leaf.

In addition, there was a very brilliant beetle on the ground. I think it’s one of the tiger beetles but I’ve sent the photo to a friend who did his graduate work on tiger beetles. I’ll save that one until I get the name from PB.

And so it ends. The nearly five-month accidental experiment in the care and feeding of a Monarch butterfly is over. The Monarch is dead, long live the Monarch.

It began, as many will recall, in October, when Dave S., in a magnanimous gesture of kindness, took the migrating butterfly into his home. For those unaware, any Monarch found in Fargo, No. Dak., in October is not going to make it, it’s already too late. Frost will catch it well before it makes it to its Mexican mountainside winter refuge. In a way Dave was defying nature. This individual was on borrowed time to be sure. But Dave gave it a home, fed it, nurtured it, cared for it, and gave it month’s worth of a gentle life. I wrote of it at first here. Then followed it with updates here and here. The regal insect is now, as Shakespeare says (Henry IV), food for worms.

Dave was kind enough to send me some parting thoughts on the subject…

A month ago my five-year-old niece and I were paging through the recent “Great Migrations” issue of the National Geographic. We came to the pages featuring the jouney of the monarch butterflies. She looked at me with amazement, “Is this Flutter’s family ?” ‘Yes it is,’ I told her.

A week later she told me she wished it was summer so Flutter could be with his family. On Saturday I had to tell her he was. He died when I was at work on Friday night.

Our four month adventure of watching him fly around our home, sometimes ending up in the kitchen sink, getting stuck behind the couch,
joining us for breakfast each morning, and taking him on weekend road trips has sadly come to an end.

The thing I will miss the most is coming home from work late at night and setting him on my chest. He could feel my heartbeat,  and would spread his wings and sit as long as I wanted him to be there. Butterflies can see ultraviolet light and maybe they can sense something else.

Can a person really get attached to an insect, or vice versa?I think I already know the answer.

Dave, thanks for sharing what was and is, a very cool slice of your life. The ultimate end was never in question. But the journey was one several of us vicariously took with you gladly.

(Addendum). A number of folks have wondered why this butterfly did not migrate to Mexico with his kin. I would only say, maybe he did. Who’s to say this particular insect didn’t come from Manitoba and was working his way south? In addition, within any population there will be outliers for any given behavior, be it breeding, migration, morphology, etc. Consider it a bell curve if you will. This male monarch was very late in his “decision” to move south. But that’s the way it goes with pioneers (outliers)–some are winners, most are losers. Those “late genes” which allowed Flutter to linger in the north, will not be passed along to progeny. Thus, the population as a whole, remains stronger.

Featured prominently in my modest front yard is a crabapple tree which has been around for several decades. It’s not particularly stunning as crabs go but it’s a nice shade producer and provides food for the occasional flock of waxwings and robins and so I have an attachment to this thing.

The older this tree gets the more ailments it seems to suffer from. I’ve trimmed out minor infestations of fireblight a few times as well as branches which have different directional ideas than my own. My kids used to climb into it when they were younger and abraded some bark away in the process but I don’t think it was very harmful. Sapsuckers began drilling sap wells some years ago and still the tree stood proudly. Now, however, the end may be in sight.

While shoveling snow last week on a particularly sunny day I clearly noticed some bark removal by woodpeckers. Folks often ask me about woodpeckers and their relationship with their landscape trees. I usually tell them not to worry, that woodpeckers only chip away at trees with insect infestations and will not harm healthy trees. Well, they’ve been at work on my crab and it doesn’t bode well for its long term survival. Again, most people think woodpeckers kill trees and that’s simply not true (sapsuckers may be the exceptions). Unseen bark or wood boring insects must be present (or had been present to soften wood, as in the case of drilling a nest hole) for the birds to expend the energy to excavate wood.

I guess I could start removing large branches and cross my fingers. But it would negate the positives this tree provides. No, I think I’ll stick with this crabapple tree as long as it wants to fight. It’s been too good to us.

Dave and Annie’s interesting, but short-lived “pet” appears to be weathering indoor conditions here in North Dakota with about as much as can be reasonably expected. I say ‘reasonably’ because I have no idea of the lifespan of a captured and cared-for monarch butterfly they’ve aptly named, Flutter.

The male butterfly was taken in their home in October and has thus far survived, largely on a diet of apple juice the two feed him every day. But as the photo shows, he is beginning to show outward signs of age. They recently treated their invited guest to a carnation which he seemed to relish.

As Dave puts it, “His wings are chipped up a bit and his front legs don’t really work anymore, but hey, he is probably 80 in human years!”

Still an amazing story to me.

Amazingly, Flutter is still hanging in there.

My buddy’s outre attempt at harboring a pet monarch butterfly continues successfully. I first spoke of it here when he told me he had “taken in” the wayward insect late in October. Having never heard of such a think, I wondered how long the male butterfly would survive.

Whatever Dave is doing, thus far it seems to be working. About that “nectar” he’s feeding his pet? It’s apple juice. He tells me Flutter–the pet’s name given to it by his wife–will often just sit on his finger, sometimes for an hour at a time. Which starts me thinking, you know those dogs folks give to retirement homes? How cool would it be for the elderly to have a few butterflies fluttering around in their midst? Just musing…

The picture? Yeah, that’s Dave hand-feeding Flutter. I’m still nearly speechless when I hear about this.

I was somewhat stunned the other day when an old friend of mine relayed to me a situation taking place in his home. (‘old’ in this case refers to how long we’ve known each other–we went to grade school together–not his age).

Seems a rather late monarch butterfly had taken refuge somewhere in his backyard recently. It was past the time when most of the butterflies had migrated and so this particular individual was destined for an inglorious end by freezing to death. With a soft touch and a soft spot in his heart he took the insect indoors on October 15. I guess I’ve never heard of anyone doing this but it sounds kind of cool.

He keeps it in a room where it flutters about pretty much on its own. I can’t remember what he feeds the critter, sugar water or some other sweet concoction.

I did a little checking and found that normally adults live two to six weeks. However, the migrants can live for a few months (the ones which make their way to Mexico). I wonder just how long this guy is going to survive in the care of my buddy? We shall see.

The photo above is one he provided and shows it feeding from a measuring spoon. This is a male monarch, told by the thin black veining and the enlarged dark spot on each hind wing; scent glands I understand.

I’ll let you know if this fella makes the winter…

Neat story Dave.