First Leps of the Year

With the unseasonably warm weather (highs in the upper 50s), I turned the porch light on to see if I could get any moths to show up.  Nothing showed the first two nights, but on February 1 one moth showed up.

Spring Cankerworm (Paleacrita vernata)

This is the Spring Cankerworm (Paleacrita vernata).  This was also the first moth that came to my light last year, although that was in late March.  The following night, a second Spring Cankerworm came in along with this moth:

Straight-toothed Sallow (Eupsilia vinulenta)

This is a Straight-toothed Sallow (Eupsilia vinulenta), probably.  “Probably” because the Sidus Sallow (Eupsilia sidus) is apparently so similar that only microscopic examination of the wing scales can positively differentiate the two.  Two nights of moths and two species was more than I would have guessed was possible during the first week of February.  Today we are back to reality with our biggest snow of the winter.

Read Full Post »

Spring Leps

With the warm weather this weekend, I set out to look for three early flying leps: a moth, the Broad-lined Erastria (Erastria coloraria), and two butterflies, Olympia Marble and Henry’s Elfin.  The Erastria’s larva feeds on Redroot (Ceanothus americanus), which is also the foodplant for the Iowa population of Nevada Buckmoth and the rare Mottled Duskywing, and I had found it at the buckmoth site in the Loess Hills last April.  I visited the same spot on Saturday and found the Erastria to be almost abundant.  This is a moth that, according to NatureServe, used to be common throughout the eastern US, but is pretty much gone from the Appalachians east.  It may still be relatively common through the Mississippi River valley and is clearly common at at least this one site in the hills.  Here is a female:

Broad-lined Erastria, Loess Hills W.A., Monona County, Iowa, 9 April 2011.

While there, I spent some time looking for Nevada Buckmoth egg rings on the Redroot.  I’ve done this before and never had any luck, even though they are supposed to be easy to find.  This time I did find a few.  It was pretty clear that Redroot is this population’s foodplant considering I’ve found hundreds of larva feeding on it and none eating anything else, but finding multiple egg rings on it confirms it.

Nevada Buckmoth egg ring, Loess Hills W.A., Monona County, IA, 9 April 2011.

The hills are the place for Olympia Marble, but it is still a little early for them, so not finding one wasn’t a big deal.  Hopefully I’ll have another shot in the next few weeks.  Also of note were my first identified tiger beetles of the year, all Cicindela limbalis, the Common Claybank Tiger Beetle which is in fact common in the hills.

On Sunday, Jaclyn and I went on a hike at Elk Rock State Park which is on the southwest shore of Red Rock Reservoir in Marion County.  Elk Rock has a small sand prairie and the trail leading to it is lined with Redbuds.  Redbuds are the foodplant of Henry’s Elfin and I saw that species at this spot three springs ago.  I was hoping to get better photos this time and was lucky to see at least 8 individuals.

Henry’s Elfin, Elk Rock S.P., Marion County, IA, 10 April 2011.

The elfin makes the fifth butterfly I’ve seen this spring following Eastern Comma, Mourning Cloak, Spring Azure, and Cabbage White.   I’ve also seen photos of Gray Comma and Orange Sulphur taken recently, so there are more species flying almost every day that the weather is warm.  As always, more and better uncropped versions of the above photos are at my Flickr page.

Read Full Post »

Spring Update

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything, so time for a quick update.  This past weekend was finally warm enough for a trip insect hunting.  On Saturday, I drove south to Lucas County and was happy to see several firsts for the year.

My first odonates were several Variegated Meadowhawks (Sympetrum corruptum) at Stephen’s State Forest.  Also at Stephen’s I found my first butterflies.  Eastern Commas, which overwinter as adults, were out in good numbers as expected.  This is a really good location for anglewings, with all three Iowa Polygonias flying here together at times.

Eastern Comma, Stephen's SF, Lucas Co, IA, 2 April 2011

Very surprising was this freshly emerged Spring Azure.  This species is common at this location, but this individual is a couple weeks earlier than expected and probably a record early date for Iowa.

Spring Azure, Stephen's SF, Lucas Co, IA, 2 April 2011

I spent some time walking a nice sandy, wooded stream hoping for tiger beetles.  I flushed one a couple times, but it made long flights and I could never locate it on the ground to identify it.  I did find a new ‘bug’ for me and a close tiger beetle relative:

Elaphrus sp., Stephen's SF, Lucas Co., IA, 2 April 2011

This beetle of the genus Elaphrus, is shaped much like a tiger beetle but is incredibly tiny.  On my screen, it would be about the length of the word “tiny”.  Apparently these can’t be identified to species from photos, so we’ll just have leave it at the genus level for now.

Lastly, my second odonate of the year showed up on Sunday, conveniently enough in my backyard.  It was of course, a Common Green Darner (Anax junius).  This species and Variegated Meadowhawk are always the first two species to appear as they migrate in from the south as adults.  Most other species overwinter here as nymphs, buried in the mud on the bottom of  their stream, river, pond, or marsh, and emerge somewhat later as the water temperature warms.

Well, that’s it for now.  This weekend is looking good temperature wise–hopefully the predictions of rain will be wrong.

Read Full Post »

Searching for Leonard’s Skipper

I’ve spent parts of the last several weekends looking for Leonard’s Skippers (Hesperia leonardus) in the Loess Hills, and somewhat to my surprise, have actually found some.  This comes after making targeted searches over the last two years for Poweshiek Skipperling, Ottoe Skipper, Arogos Skipper, Mulberry Wing, Dion Skipper, and Dusted Skipper and failing without exception.  I had begun to think that I was no longer capable of finding uncommon skippers after having good success in the summer of 2008.

Leonard’s Skippers are kind of interesting for several reasons.  One is that they are the latest resident skipper to appear, with a single brood flying from late August through September.  Another is that two very different looking subspecies occur in Iowa, which were formerly considered separate species (H. l. leonardus of the east and H. l. pawnee of the Great Plains).  The range maps in the popular field guides are confusing at best when it comes to where in the Midwest this species occurs and which subspecies occurs where.  The Kaufman guide shows Leonard’s throughout Iowa, Nebraska, and Missouri even though in Iowa it is essentially confined to the Loess Hills.  Butterflies Through Binoculars shows it confined to the Loess Hills but shows these to be exclusively H. l. pawnee.  In Missouri,  H. l. leonardus occurs on the Ozark Plateau but is apparently absent from areas adjacent to Iowa including the southern terminus of the Loess Hills.  In Nebraska, H. l. pawnee is found in the western 2/3 of the state but I haven’t found any suggestion that either subspecies is extant in eastern Nebraska.  So basically the Iowa Loess Hills skippers range the entire length of the hills, but are surrounded by unoccupied areas to the east, west, and south for hundreds of miles.

Read Full Post »

A New Species for Iowa

Last Sunday, Cory Gregory and I made a trip up to Plymouth County in the far northwest corner of Iowa.  Plymouth County borders South Dakota and is separated from it by the Big Sioux River.  It contains some of the most extensive prairie tracts left in Iowa, including the Nature Conservancy’s Broken Kettle Grasslands, home to Iowa’s only Black-billed Magpies and Prairie Rattlesnakes, and the Plymouth County Conservation Board’s Five Ridge Prairie.  The target of our trip was the Ottoe Skipper, a species neither of us had seen before, which occurs on the drier, shorter grass prairies of the Loess Hills.  We started at Five Ridge Prairie because it has historically had a good population of Ottoes.  If you check the photos of this species in Glassberg’s Butterflies Through Binoculars-The East, you will see that they were taken at this location.

After a bit of a hike along the access road, we made it up to one of the large ridges where the slopes looked like appropriate habitat.  We quickly started seeing Regal Fritillaries, and they proved to be fairly common.  Also common were the large grassland cicada Tibicen dorsatus and a robber fly that I think is Proctacanthus milbertii.

Proctacanthus milbertii, Five Ridge Prairie, Plymouth County, IA, 1 August 2010

Most exciting were some dragonflies that were hanging out on the trail along the ridge top.  When I first got a look at one that perched ahead of us, I told Cory that I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it was a new state record.

Read Full Post »

Southern Invasion

On July 20, Chris Edwards wrote a post to the Iowa Insect email list relaying Mike Reese’s suggestion that Iowans be on the lookout for Funereal Duskywing.  This is a skipper species from desert habitats of southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas with a known tendency to stray northward.  It had recently been reported from the St. Louis and Kansas City areas of Missouri and a single individual had made it to Wisconsin.  This species had not been previous reported from Iowa (ever), but with this apparent invasion underway, it seemed reasonable that it would turn up.

It didn’t take long.  The next day, Mark Brown reported that he had photographed a Funereal in Webster County on July 19.  Ray Moranz, a butterfly ecologist doing field work in Ringgold County, reported seeing one on July 18, but was unable to catch or photograph it.  With these reports, plus the Missouri and Wisconsin sightings, it seemed like a good idea to spend a day in southern Iowa seeing if I could turn one up.  My basic strategy was to visit a couple spots where I have previously had both high diversity and high numbers of butterflies.  My first choice was Slip Bluff Park in Decatur County.  This is a great spot because it is about as far south as you can get in Iowa, it sits right by I-35 for a relatively quick drive down, and it has diverse habitats that have repeatedly produced rare insects.

I arrived at 9:30 to find butterflies literally everywhere.  Red-spotted Purples, Question Marks, and Eastern Commas lined the roads and sulphurs were puddling everywhere there was mud.

Little Yellows, Slip Bluff Park, Decatur County, IA, 25 July 2010

Among the usual Clouded and Orange Sulphurs were large numbers of Little Yellows.  Little Yellows are a southern immigrant species, meaning that they don’t overwinter in Iowa in any stage of their life cycle, but must recolonize as adults flying north each year.

Read Full Post »

Catching up on Summer Insects

It has been almost a month since my last post.  My plan had always been to post once a week during the summer, summarizing whatever I did each weekend.  Well, I slacked off for no good reason the week of May 24, after my dad and I had a good time hiking around the Loess Hills in Monona and Harrison Counties.  I had planned a pretty good trip for the following weekend, so I figured I would just wait until after that and combine them in one post.  I started off that weekend down at Waubonsie State Park in Fremont County.  This is the southwestern-most county in Iowa and the park is known for a number of rare in Iowa butterflies, such as Hoary Edge and Zebra Swallowtail.  I then worked my way north along the western border, stopping at Hitchcock Nature Center in Pottawattamie County, the Loess Hills State Forest in Harrison County, and lastly Sylvan Runkel State Preserve in Monona County.  And, after that trip, I basically lost my desire to visit, write about, or even think about our natural areas for a couple weeks due to a really deep sense of loss and frustration.  I’m not going to elaborate, other than to say that many of you know what event triggered this.  So, that is why it has been so long between posts.  Now, it’s time to move on to more positive things and get back to regular blog posts.

I don’t have anything particular in mind to write about other than to run through some of the insects I’ve found in the past few weeks.  A brief note on the photos below: due to the format of this blog, all photos are limited to 500 pixels wide, which means either shrinking them down or cropping them to fit.  The full sized, uncropped versions always look better and can be found on my Flickr page, along with many others.

My two May trips to the Loess Hills were to look for Dusted and Common Roadside-Skippers.  Skippers were fairly common; I found 8 species, but did not find either of my targets, which in Iowa are confined to native prairie.  At Waubonsie, I saw 5-6 Hayhurst’s Scallopwings.  This odd little skipper is rare in Iowa, and generally found as just a single here and there, so finding this many was interesting.  Most of the skippers were nectaring in a big roadside clover patch, including 2 Sachem, a southern, immigrant species that I had previously seen only in late fall.

Hayhurst's Scallopwing, Waubonsie State Park, Fremont Co., IA, 29 May 2010

Hobomok Skipper, Waubonsie State Park, Fremont Co., IA, 29 May 2010

Read Full Post »

Photo Update II

Well, it was another weekend of  weather that wasn’t particularly good for insects.  Saturday was warm and sunny for a few hours midday when I had a family commitment.  I made it out to Chichaqua Bottoms northeast of Des Moines, just in time for the clouds to roll in and the temp to drop.  I have a new camera and lens, so I was hoping to find a lot of targets to practice on.  I only found a few.

First up, an American Carrion Beetle.  This guy was one of several working on this piece of dung.

American Carrion Beetle (Necrophila americana)

Here is a somewhat worn Painted Lady.  This species has been uncommon this year for some reason.  This is only the second or third individual that I have seen.

Read Full Post »

Photo Update

Here are a few photos from the past week or two.  It seems like there is more insect activity every day.

First, a couple of migratory butterflies–a Red Admiral:

Red Admiral, Sylvan Runkel State Preserve, Monona Co., IA, 18 Apr 2010

And a Painted Lady:

Painted Lady, Waterworks Park, Polk Co., IA, 22 Apr 2010

A very early Wild Indigo Duskywing–not a migrant, overwinters as a pupa:

Wild Indigo Duskywing, Waterworks Park, Polk Co., IA, 21 Apr 2010

Grapevine Epimenis (Psychomorpha epimenis), a cool little day-flying moth which seems to be very common this spring:

Grapevine Epimenis, Sylvan Runkel State Preserve, Monona Co., IA,18 Apr 2010

A new species for me, Eastern Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa virginica):

Eastern Carpenter Bee, Ashworth Park, Polk Co., IA, 20 Apr 2010

And lastly, a poor photo but a cool bug.  This is an ichneumon wasp, tentatively identified as Dolichomitus irritator:

ichneumon wasp, Ashworth Park, Polk Co., IA, 20 Apr 2010

Read Full Post »

First Tiger Beetles of the Year

For the first time this spring I had the combination of a weekend, warm sunny weather, and free time to check a few spots here in Polk County.  Yesterday I hiked the sand prairie trail at Chichaqua Bottoms.  This trail runs along a sandy ridge, that seems to be native prairie, overlooking the Skunk River floodplain which has a large restored wetland complex and prairie restoration plantings.  This spot area is known for its nesting Sandhill Cranes which I could occasionally hear calling in the distance.  Barely out of the parking lot, I ran into my first dragonfly of the year, a Variegated Meadowhawk (Sympetrum corruptum).   Further along, I reached a disturbed sandy portion of the trail where I found my first tiger beetles of the year.

Festive Tiger Beetle (Cicindela scutellaris lecontei)

This is Cicindela scutellaris lecontei, the Festive Tiger Beetle.  They were common anywhere the trail opened up and the soil was sandy.  This population has very variable markings on the elytra (the “shell” that covers the abdomen) which are much more extensive than those of the population I saw last summer at the Eddyville Sand Prairie. 

Read Full Post »