More butterflies

As promised here are a few butterfly photos from lately. A lot of new species have emerged in the past week or two and I've been trying to get decent photos of as many of them as I can.

I took a break for an hour with my coworker Shane on June 13th, so we ventured into the Spring-garden area to see what we could find. Along with Summer Azures, Northern Crescents, Black Swallowtails, and a few more of the regulars, we also saw:

Silvery Checkerspot

Least Skipper

Peck's Skipper

And the highlight of the walk - 2 adult Eastern Foxsnakes. This female was pit-tagged by Ojibway in 2004. She was 66 grams then (just a baby) and was now over 450 grams. Considering that some of our Eastern Foxsnakes are close to 900 grams, this puts into perspective the longevity of these snakes.

Eastern Foxsnake

A few more butterflies from this week:

Northern/Pearl Crescent

European Skipper

European Skipper

 The Baltimore Checkerspots are still common in the Tallgrass Prairie across from the Ojibway Nature Centre.

Baltimore Checkerspot

Baltimore Checkerspot

 Some of the next few I am not too sure on the IDs.

Southern Cloudywing

Hobomok Skipper

European Skipper

Wild Indigo Duskywing

In other news, I finally ordered a Nikon 300mm f/4 AF-S lens. While not one of the huge telephotos that are 5,000-10,000$, this is still a very good quality lens for a fraction of the price. Image quality appears excellent with this lens - the only drawbacks being reach (its only 300 mm) and brightness (if it is used with a teleconverter). This is my first lens that isn't a macro or wide-angle lens, so I am pretty excited to test it out with some butterflies and birds...

Bugs and stuff

I broke out of my usual birding/herping routine today and delved into something totally different - butterflies. I find that looking for butterflies is a lot like birding - they fly (obviously), they each are found in specific microhabitats, some migrate long distances, etc. So Dan Riley and I headed out to Ojibway prairie for a few hours this evening. Some highlights:

This is some sort of Duskywing - our best guess is Dreamy Duskywing.

The majority of the butterflies we found were skippers - European, Least, and Hobomok. I think that this is a Hobomok:

The regular birds were present, including Field Sparrows, Baltimore and Orchard Orioles, Eastern Towhees, etc. We found a few Bluebirds and heard a Pheasant as well. No cuckoos this time.

While walking through the field, we stumbled upon this Baltimore Checkerspot. It didn't take long to locate about 10 more - maybe it will be a good year for a flight of them.

What the hell is this skipper?

This Northern Crescent was looking pretty worn already.

And finally, a Silver-spotted Skipper before the rain came down. Not a bad hour of butterflying by a couple of idiots.