It is long and slender-bodied, almost like a knitting or darning needle. I can recall that it was quite large; I don’t think I’d ever seen such a large dragonfly so close before. The eyes are huge; see how there’s no “top of the head” on this guy? There’s eyes, and nothing else. And as you can see, it was hanging vertically from [...]]]> A two-year-old mystery has come closer to being solved, thanks to the friendly folks at bugguide.net. You see, back when Tropical Storm Fay blew into town on August 18, 2008, a large dragonfly took shelter on our porch:

It is long and slender-bodied, almost like a knitting or darning needle. I can recall that it was quite large; I don’t think I’d ever seen such a large dragonfly so close before. The eyes are huge; see how there’s no “top of the head” on this guy? There’s eyes, and nothing else. And as you can see, it was hanging vertically from the brick face surrounding the giant picture window that I was in the process of covering with hurricane shutters at the time.

All of these traits (except for the hurricane shutters, of course) point to this dragonfly being one of the eight darner species (family Aeshnidae) in Florida. Here is Dunkle’s description of the family:

The darners are long and slender-bodied, like a darning needle, and they include the largest Florida Dragonflies. Their eyes are very large and meet in a seam on top of the head. In most species scars can be seen on the eyes of a female where a male has held her during mating. Females have an ovipositor with blades, as in the Petaltails. Darners hang vertically on a perch whether it is a vertical stem or a horizontal twig [or in this case a brick-face wall]” (20).

Unfortunately I wasn’t aware of the importance of the thorax in distinguishing among several possible species in different genera, Comet Darner (Anax longipes), Cyrano Darner (Nasiaeschna pentacantha), and Regal Darner (Coryphaeschna ingens), but I’m pretty sure that this is the latter species. In the first place, the friendly folks at bugguide.net think it’s likely to be. In the second place, most of the photos I’ve seen of Comet Darners show “blotches” on the abdomen, rather than the “dots” I see on this one. Cyrano darner has those dots, but, according to the checklist from Odonata Central, has not been recorded in Palm Beach County, while Regal Darner has been. (Not that going by the book is a sure guide, particularly with a tropical storm that could be blowing things in from far away, but it’s another piece of the puzzle.)

Now, two years later, I sure wish I’d taken more photos, but at the time I was more concerned with putting the hurricane shutters on than I was with narrowing down the ID of the animal. I was pretty sure the photos I had would be conclusive. As it turns out, they are simply not good, from any angle, because I didn’t know what I should have been looking for. That’s why relying on photography for a positive ID is a problem: if the field mark you need is not in focus, you’re out of luck. (On the flip side, it’s a good learning tool: now I know to try to get good pictures of the thorax for any darner, so we can use the markings there to help figure out what it might be.)

Here’s the other side, of the animal, with a better view of the tail:

In this view, it’s a bit easier to see the ovipositor:

Those two strips hanging down from the very end of the tail, on the left of the picture (top, or dorsal side)? That’s not the ovipositor; those are called cerci, or terminal abdominal appendages, and both sexes have them. On a good picture of this insect, like this one, you can see that they are quite long; the ones on this lady are pretty short. No, the ovipositor is a bit higher up, on the right of the picture (ventral, or bottom, side of the abdomen). So don’t get confused if you see a male dragonfly with terminal appendages. That’s perfectly normal. A male dragonfly with an ovipositor, though—that would be big news.

So, to make a long story short, if you want to take better nature photos, learn more about your subjects, so you can know what it is you’re trying to capture. Then see if there’s a way to make it pretty. I have a long way to go on both fronts… But it’s a fun road to travel!

There are 169 species records in Florida now, but these include both the zygoptera (damselwings) and the anisoptera (dragonflies); I’m not sure what the breakdown between the two groups is. Back in 1989, when Sidney Dunkle published his groundbreaking field guide to the state, he included 86 dragonfly species (94 with Bermuda and the Bahamas [...]]]> I think everyone likes to learn things. I know I do. Last week when I spotted a dragonfly perched in the oak tree out front, I grabbed my camera and binoculars to investigate a bit further. Perched Dragonflies are Much Easier to Identify than Flying Dragonflies.

There are 169 species records in Florida now, but these include both the zygoptera (damselwings) and the anisoptera (dragonflies); I’m not sure what the breakdown between the two groups is. Back in 1989, when Sidney Dunkle published his groundbreaking field guide to the state, he included 86 dragonfly species (94 with Bermuda and the Bahamas included); I wonder if there have been enough changes to the list to require a new field guide to Florida?

Whichever number you like, 169 or 93,  it’s a tolerably round number for a group of insects that are as hard to chase down as odonates. Even though there are only seven families of dragonfly species in both Americas, I still can’t separate many of them in the field even to the family level; it’s only with a camera that I stand a chance. I’m trying to change that, little by little, by learning the species that occur commonly, so that I’ll recognize anything new. (If anyone has a simple flight silhouette technique for sorting out, skimmers and darners at a glance, I’d love to buy it!  The keys in my major reference works are either too complex, like the one in Garrison, Ellenrieder, & Louton, which includes all the genera of North and South America, or, if they’re as straightforward as the one in Mitchell & Lasswell, it still requires that you have the insect in hand.)

Part of my problem, I think, is that most of the species I see are members of the Libellulidae, the skimmer family. Large and diverse as it is, it’s still only one of the seven families; it’s pretty rare that I see other flight silhouettes at all! (Last Saturday at Yamato Scrub I got excited because I saw a silhouette I didn’t recognize; turned out to be some kind of sphecid wasp.) If I don’t often see the other silhouettes, I’ll have a hard time learning them, won’t I? (Guess I’d better get out in the field more often…) As you know, there are, according to Odonata Central, 53 distinct species in Palm Beach County.

Here then, is a typical silhouette of a libelullid, or skimmer, as seen by me in a tree:

This species, Tramea carolina, a member of the skimmer family, is fairly common in my area. Most people call it Carolina Saddlebags, because of the large markings on the hindwing; they really do sort of look like the thing is carrying luggage back there!

However, if you click on that link in the previous paragraph (the #1 Google link for Carolina Saddlebags), you’ll see why I might prefer the more descriptive name given to it in 1989 by Sidney W. Dunkle, in the first ever color photo guide to dragonfly species anywhere in North America: Violet-masked Glider. After all, that #1 linked-to page on the Carolina Saddlebags is to a website describing the dragonflies of New Jersey!

I like that name better for a couple of reasons. One, it avoids the tendency that has fouled up the common names of birds for centuries, that being to name a species based on a location that it might or not occur in, just because that’s where the first specimen was encountered. Two, it’s descriptive.

Whatever name they go by, though, they certainly are distinctive dragonflies; when I see these guys, I know I’m looking at a skimmer, probably a Tramea species, and I even have a good shot of telling whether it’s a Carolina or a Red. It’s a start!

References

Dunkle, S.W. (1989). Dragonflies of the Florida Peninsula, Bermuda and the Bahamas. Gainesville: Scientific Publishers.

Garrison, R.W., Ellenrieder, N.V., Louton, J.A. (2006). Dragonfly Genera of the New World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP.

Mitchell, F.L. & Lasswell, J.L. (2005). A Dazzle of Dragonflies. Texas A&M UP.

Pieria was a region in ancient Macedonia, rather than Thessaly where Pierus and his daughters (the Pierides) lived. But Macedonia was where Mount Olympus was supposed to be, and the Muses (also called the Pierides after they pwned Pierus’s daughters in the earliest episode of Ancient Greek Idol) hung out there. So Pieria might well have been named for the Muses, rather than the ancient tribe, the Pieres, [...]]]> My post about the Pierides the other day got me thinking of Alexander Pope’s advice, in his Essay on Criticism: “A little learning is a dang’rous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.”

Pieria was a region in ancient Macedonia, rather than Thessaly where Pierus and his daughters (the Pierides) lived. But Macedonia was where Mount Olympus was supposed to be, and the Muses (also called the Pierides after they pwned Pierus’s daughters in the earliest episode of Ancient Greek Idol) hung out there. So Pieria might well have been named for the Muses, rather than the ancient tribe, the Pieres, or their country of Pieris, as the nonmythological histories would have it.

In any case, I’ve decided to follow Pope’s (not the Pope’s) advice, and try to learn more about the insect life around me. I posted about butterflies last week, so I’m posting about dragonflies this week. (No, I’m not just giving them one week apiece and calling that “drinking deeply”; I’ll be reading about them for months. But it will take a while to get Needham, Westfall & May through interlibrary loan, and we forgot to go to FAU tonight to get Corbet, so…)

Anyway, as part of my project, I decided to find out how many dragonflies are likely to turn up in my area. It turns out that there are 53 recorded species of dragonfly in Palm Beach County, according to Odonata Central:

Anax junius (Common Green Darner)
Anax longipes (Comet Darner)
Aphylla williamsoni (Two-striped Forceptail)
Argia fumipennis (Variable Dancer)
Argia sedula (Blue-ringed Dancer)
Arigomphus pallidus (Gray-green Clubtail)
Brachymesia gravida (Four-spotted Pennant)
Celithemis eponina (Halloween Pennant)
Celithemis ornata (Ornate Pennant)
Coryphaeschna adnexa (Blue-faced Darner)
Coryphaeschna ingens (Regal Darner)
Crocothemis servilia (Scarlet Skimmer)
Enallagma civile (Familiar Bluet)
Enallagma doubledayi (Atlantic Bluet)
Enallagma durum (Big Bluet)
Enallagma pollutum (Florida Bluet)
Enallagma vesperum (Vesper Bluet)
Epitheca princeps (Prince Baskettail)
Epitheca stella (Florida Baskettail)
Erythemis plebeja (Pin-tailed Pondhawk)
Erythemis simplicicollis (Common Pondhawk)
Erythemis vesiculosa (Great Pondhawk)
Erythrodiplax minuscula (Little Blue Dragonlet)
Erythrodiplax umbrata (Band-winged Dragonlet)
Gomphus minutus (Cypress Clubtail)
Gynacantha nervosa (Twilight Darner)
Ischnura hastata (Citrine Forktail)
Ischnura kellicotti (Lilypad Forktail)
Ischnura posita (Fragile Forktail)
Ischnura ramburii (Rambur’s Forktail)
Ladona deplanata (Blue Corporal)
Lestes vidua (Carolina Spreadwing)
Libellula auripennis (Golden-winged Skimmer)
Libellula axilena (Bar-winged Skimmer)
Libellula incesta (Slaty Skimmer)
Libellula jesseana (Purple Skimmer)
Libellula needhami (Needham’s Skimmer)
Macrodiplax balteata (Marl Pennant)
Macromia taeniolata (Royal River Cruiser)
Miathyria marcella (Hyacinth Glider)
Micrathyria aequalis (Spot-tailed Dasher)
Nehalennia integricollis (Southern Sprite)
Nehalennia pallidula (Everglades Sprite)
Orthemis ferruginea (Roseate Skimmer)
Pachydiplax longipennis (Blue Dasher)
Pantala flavescens (Wandering Glider)
Pantala hymenaea (Spot-winged Glider)
Perithemis tenera (Eastern Amberwing)
Stylurus plagiatus (Russet-tipped Clubtail)
Tramea carolina (Carolina Saddlebags)
Tramea lacerata (Black Saddlebags)
Tramea onusta (Red Saddlebags)
Triacanthagyna trifida (Phantom Darner)

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen at least 16 (indicated in red above); I’ve photographed 8 or 9 of them (and failed to ID many of the ones I’ve photographed). I’d love to find more, but to do that, I have to start getting specific. Where am I likely to find a new species? We don’t have too many rivers here in Palm Beach County, so if river cruisers require rivers, they’ll probably have to wait until my next trip up to Riverbend Park. But we have plenty of canals; do those work? I’ll have to find out.

I get several different species at my house, many more at Yamato Scrub, and dozens at Fern Forest (down in Broward County); it’s time to start getting more serious about this.

I’m thirsty; time to head to Pieria!

In this photo, which is backlit, you can see the faint yellow patterning through the wings. But since I couldn’t see that through my viewfinder (it’s a small butterfly, remember?), I decided to crawl around to the other side, so I could have the sun behind me:

And that’s when I was able to see [...]]]> Lots and lots of insects are small. Even butterflies, those showy, gaudy, colorful things, can be very small (they can also be pretty big, of course). The other day I was out weeding the front yard when I noticed this little teeny tiny butterfly in the grass:

In this photo, which is backlit, you can see the faint yellow patterning through the wings. But since I couldn’t see that through my viewfinder (it’s a small butterfly, remember?), I decided to crawl around to the other side, so I could have the sun behind me:

And that’s when I was able to see it a little more clearly. For perspective, the flower bud it’s perched on is 3/8″ from top to bottom. My lens won’t focus any closer than 7 or 8 feet, so even though this weak flier wasn’t budging when I was close enough to see it better, I couldn’t get a picture from that close. Drat.*

This tiny little butterfly is a pierid; that is, a member of the family Pieridae, commonly known as Whites and Yellows. All the sulphurs are in this family as well. (The sulphurs, though, are quite a bit larger than this little guy.) The Pieridae, like most families of organisms, come in a wide range of sizes. By the way, the pierids get their name from the Pierides, who are, depending on who the naming author had in mind, either the Muses themselves, or the nine daughters of Pierus whose claim to fame comes from having challenged the nine Muses to a contest of song (Rosso Fiorentino painted a picture of this contest in the 16th century, and Karel van Mander later drew a cartoon of it.). Of course the mortal maidens lost their challenge of the gods, and were transformed into birds (some say magpies, others say a different species for each daughter; this latter makes sense, because the name of at least 5 of the nine Pierides is the name, in Greek, of a different bird**). Whether the butterfly family is named for the immortal or the mortal maidens, the name conjures up images of antique art and flowing, diaphanous robes, which I suppose is appropriate, given the general look of these butterflies.

So anyway, this pierid butterfly is Eurema daira, commonly known as the Barred Yellow. It’s pretty common here in Florida, at least in my experience. It’s even more common in winter in south Florida, according to my BTB (Butterflies Through Binoculars), because these guys “[migrate] southward from north to south Florida in the fall” (61).

I realize now that I’d seen this species in my lawn many times before, but because they’re so small I’d never been able to identify them until I got these pictures. So that’s one more mystery solved by a willingness to lie belly down in the grass with a camera. Yay!

Other butterfly species that enjoy the flowers in my lawn are Hylephila phileus, Fiery Skipper:

and Leptotes cassius, Cassius Blue:

So, all told, I’ve got small representatives from 3 of the 7 groups in my BTB: Pierids, Skippers, and Gossamer-Wings. Of course, some of these groupings have subgroupings; pierids don’t, but skippers (family Hesperiidae) are such a large family that many people think they’re really a third type of lepidopteran, (moths, butterflies, and skippers), instead of just a family in the butterfly group. H. phileus is a Grass-Skipper (currently subfamily Hesperiinae). And my Gossamer-Wing, L. cassius, is one of the many Blues in the large family Lycaenidae.

Ain’t taxonomy fun?

References

Glassberg, J. (1999). Butterflies Through Binoculars: The East. NY:Oxford UP.

* Plus, I suffer from an undiagnosed neuromuscular condition known (by me) as “can’t hold telephoto lenses steady,” which means that, without a VR lens, my handheld images are always a bit out of focus. I’m not alone in this. This condition afflicts nearly 100% of the photographers in the world. Seriously. Read any book on photography. They will all say the same thing: use a tripod! Or a VR lens.

** From the dreaded Wikipedia: “Colymbas, lyngx, Cenchris, Cissa, Chloris, Acalanthis, Nessa, Pipo, and Dracontis. These names were taken from actual names of birds in ancient Greek, such as the wryneck, hawk, jay, duck, goldfinch, and four others with no recognizable modern equivalents.” From my Lempriere, “It may perhaps be supposed, that the victorious Muses assumed the name of the conquered daughters of Pierus, and ordered themselves to be called Pierides, in the same manner as Minerva was called Pallas because she had killed the giant Pallas.”

Mark Deyrup, the author of Florida’s Fabulous Insects, is another of those entomological writers who proves how one can relate charming stories in an engaging [...]]]> I was browsing my favorite used bookstore in Boca the other day (I say “my favorite,” but actually, I think it’s the only used bookstore in Boca. Nevertheless.) when I ran across four volumes in the Florida’s Fabulous… series. I pounced on them the way a tiger beetle pounces on other beetles, or a robber fly pounces on a bee, even though paying full price for these large format mass market volumes wouldn’t break the bank.

Mark Deyrup, the author of Florida’s Fabulous Insects, is another of those entomological writers who proves how one can relate charming stories in an engaging way. (Thomas Eisner and E.O. Wilson being the modern flagbearers of this writing style that goes back at least as far as Darwin, the beetle-lover. May Berenbaum comes to mind as well.) I was going to quote you some, but then I discovered that I would pretty much have to just blog the entire book, which isn’t cool.

So I won’t be able to show you quotes like this one:

So varied are the Hymenoptera, that there are no simple features that label its members at a glance, except perhaps the possession of two pairs of transparent wings, the forewings much larger than the hind wings. This is one of those classroom distinctions that is wonderfully obvious in diagrams, but not at all obvious out in the garden. (138)

Or this one:

Studies of Florida Hymenoptera are still in a pioneering stage, and even guesses about the number of species in the state have a wild and wooly quality: probably more than 3,000; probably less than 6,000. More than 1,000 species have been found on the Archbold Biological Station in south-central Florida, so there can be masses of species even at a single site. All specialists working on groups of Hymenoptera find species unknown to scientists when they begin working in Florida. (138–9)

Or this one:

Florida has many more species of horse and deer flies than most people realize, largely because one squashed fly looks rather like another. There are about 100 species in Florida. (124)

Well, my unofficial quote limit is three, so that’s all you get. If you want more, go to any bookstore in Florida and you can find a new copy; I was just excited because I found this one at a discount in a used store. And I think I met the author several years ago when I visited Archbold in the company of an astronomer friend of mine who works there… So, yay me! (Where can you say yay me, if not your own blog?)

Florida's Fabulous Insects, by Mark Deyrup

References

Deyrup, Mark. (2000). Florida’s Fabulous Insects. Tampa, FL: World Publications.

UPDATE: After joining Odonata Central, I discovered that back issues of their newsletter, Argia, are open to the public. So I thought I’d add this review of the book by none other than Sidney Dunkle. It appears in Argia: The News Journal of the Dragonfly Society of the Americas, 12:2, 20 July 200, pp. 16-17:

FLORIDA’S FABULOUS INSECTS, by Mark Deyrup

Book review by Sid Dunkle, Plano, TX.

This, one of the most beautiful insect books I have seen, is a large-format, soft-cover book, filled cover to cover with color photos. The principal author is Mark Deyrup, a very knowledgeable entomologist, from whom I learned interesting snippets of information throughout the 169 pages of the book. The Odonata are covered on pages 6 to 25, including 54 color photos oftarvae and adults. The book, published in 2000, has already had 3 printings, and courtesy of editor Tim Ohr, I was able to correct nearly all of the (few) errors that were present in the odonate chapter of the second printing. Some of the odonate photos were posed, some were not. A few of the posed photos are misleading, namely: 1) Three dragonflies are shown perched on flowers, which they rarely do, 2) One female Erythemis simplicicoUis is shown eating another as they face each other, and 3) Tramea onusta is shown eating a honeybee, although I have no records of such large prey for this species. My only other objection is that scientific names of species are not given, although the reader will be able to identify nearly all the photos of adult odonates by referencing my Florida field guides.

Anyway, the heat reminded me that we were still in or near the dog days of summer, which I wrote about earlier, in connection with the moon. The Latin for dog days, of course, is diēs caniculārēs. (I inexplicably left that out of my post on the Dog Days [...]]]> So I was riding my bike Saturday morning with Eric. It was hot. Hotter than last weekend, when the nice west wind and cloud cover brought a noticeable (not strong, just noticeable) coolness to one or two shady areas along the ride. This morning there was no such thing. It was hot.

Anyway, the heat reminded me that we were still in or near the dog days of summer, which I wrote about earlier, in connection with the moon. The Latin for dog days, of course, is diēs caniculārēs. (I inexplicably left that out of my post on the Dog Days moon.)

In any event, our bike route takes me, not by chance, through the portions of FAU’s campus that still serve as home to a small population of Burrowing Owl, Athene cunicularia.

I’m not sure that there’s a strong etymological connection between “burrowing” (cunicularia) and “of or relating to dogs” (caniculares), but the two words are mighty similar. And when you’re riding your bike through the heat associated with one of those words and you’re looking at the other,well,  the link is forged, and off you go. It’s not even an “unhappy association of ideas,which have no connection in nature,*” because, make of it what you will, it really does seem that A. cunicularia is more visible  during the diēs caniculārēs. It might just be that they still have young owls around the burrow to watch out for; it might be that they actually enjoy the heat.

And there’s a further connection: in most of the Burrowing Owl’s range in the United States (except here in Florida, of course), the owls frequently make use of prairie dog (Cynomys spp.) holes for their homes. Below is a picture of C. ludovicianus from Wikipedia for those of you who don’t know what a prairie dog looking out of its hole looks like:

A black-tailed prairie dog at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., looks out from a system of burrows, characteristically scanning the horizon. On average, these rodents grow to between 12 and 16 inches (30 and 40 cm) long, including their short tails.

Kind of similar to the Burrowing Owl, no?

Here in Florida, with the exception of the rare bird that has access to an abandoned gopher tortoise burrow, the owls tend to dig their own. I’m thinking that’s because Florida scrub sand is a lot easier to dig in than that thick prairie grass, and no one I’ve read offers a contradictory explanation.

Whatever the case may be, the answer to the question in the title of this post (when is a burrowing owl like a prairie dog?) is: all the time, sort of. Except in Florida. But particularly more so during the dog days of summer. Whenever they are.

*I refer you to John Locke by way of Laurence Sterne. The quote appears in Volume 1, Chapter 4 of Tristram Shandy, in which the eponymous hero makes oblique reference to the fact that his mother, whenever she heard his father winding up the clock in the hall knew to get herself all wound up as well.

Whatever you call it, it happens today at 1:05 p.m. EDT. And as you may recall from previous full moon [...]]]> The moon goes by many different names. Here are the moon names for August according to MoonPhase, one of my favorite lunar apps for my iPod (and iPad, but I’m consulting the iPod version because Someone Who Shall Remain Nameless drained the battery last night and didn’t plug it in so it’s recharging from the wall charger):

• August (Calendar Month)
• Dog Days (in Colonial American parlance)
• Sturgeon (Algonquin, which was the basis for the Farmers’ Almanac moon names)
• Grain (English)
• Dispute (Celtic)
• Wyrt (Medieval wiccan)
• Lightning (Neo pagan).

Whatever you call it, it happens today at 1:05 p.m. EDT. And as you may recall from previous full moon posts, I don’t like to take clear weather for granted, so I went out last night to shoot the moon. Here is how I found it at 15 hours before full:

Libration was pretty minimal; the eastern limb was slightly turned toward Earth (1 degree past neutral) and the southern limb was tilted our direction by 3 degrees. Not too much “extra” on the face of the moon last night, and there will be even less tonight (a bit more southern limb, but bang on neutral east–west).

If you recall the question of moon names from previous posts, you might like this very good explanation of the two different systems for naming the full moon. That is, whatever actual name you choose to assign to the full moon (Dog Days, Sturgeon, etc.), in whatever tradition (Colonial American, Farmers’ Almanac, etc.), you will be assigning it based on one of two methods: the (straightforward) “monthly” system (in which the full moon of January gets the first name of the system: Winter moon, January Moon, Cold moon, etc.) or the more involved, but much more seasonally consistent “seasonal” method. The seasonal method involves knowing where you are in relation to the solstices and equinoxes. That is, you need to know what season you’re in, so that you can name the moons appropriately over a longer term. For example, December is the “last” month of the calendar year, but the “first” month of the Winter season.

The difference between the two systems shows up most clearly around the solstices and equinoxes. For example, if, like in 2009, there’s a full moon in December after the Solstice, that moon would have the first name in the series in the seasonal system, but the last name in the series under the monthly rules.

And, if you recall, December 2009 posed a problem because there were two full moons! That made it a blue moon month under the monthly system. Under the seasonal system, though, there was no blue moon in December 2009. There was just the last full moon of autumn (December 1) and the first full moon of winter (December 31). Blue moons can only occur in February, May, August, or November in this method, because it’s the third full moon in a season that has four the blue moon. (Remember? I wrote about this earlier. And if that post isn’t readable enough, you can try this one.)

Regardless of which computus you’re using, though, you still need to name your moons. And I like the Colonial American moon names best, so those are the ones I use, for the most part, in these posts. Others prefer the Farmers’ Almanac names. I reproduce a chart from their website with the moon names for 2010. A prize to the person who spots the irony in this table (think November):

That’s right. The Maine Farmers’ Almanac, the people who originated the seasonal blue moon rule, list November’s moon, the third moon in a four-moon season, as Full Beaver Moon. I assume this is because there are only 12 moons in this calendar year, so they didn’t have an “extra” moon to name?

Getting back to last night’s moon, though, I still want to get to the bottom of this idea of Dog Days moon. If you believe Wikipedia, the “actual” dog days (“the hottest, most sultry days of summer”) arrive at different times of the year depending on latitude and climate, but I’m afraid I’m a bit more traditional than that. I maintain that the best definition of dog days, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, are those 30 to 40 days surrounding the heliacal rising of Sirius, the Dog Star.

To be fair, the Wikipedia article does mention this definition as well, but it relegates it to the “also defined as” ghetto. But to be even more fair, Wikipedia’s notion that the dog days vary by latitude is “right,” but for the wrong reasons! It’s not just that the hottest, most sultry days of summer arrive at different times of the year depending on how far north of the equator you are; the actual heliacal rising of Sirius varies by over a month in the Northern Hemisphere! As a a matter of fact, the heliacal rising of Sirius at my latitude (roughly 26° N) was nearly a month ago, during the so-called Summer Moon! And it was even earlier (July 17) at the latitude of Heliopolis when this idea appears to have originated (now it occurs on August 4 at that latitude, but that’s because thousands of years of precession have changed things).

If we go by the modern definition of dog days as the hottest days of summer, then here in South Florida they can start as early as June (or even May if you’ve just moved to our fair clime), and they don’t end until late September. Even Halloween is pretty hot here; poor little Eric was sweating like a monster in his dinosaur costume two years ago, and he was one hot sweaty little bee last year!

But I digress. As always, here is the gallery of the full moons of 2010:

[Show as slideshow]

References

Holberg, J.B. (2007). Sirius: Brightest Diamond in the Night Sky. NY: Springer.

At 10 square miles, most places would probably consider STA-1W to be a giant filtration marsh, but this is Florida real estate: it’s all about location, location, location. Situated at the northwestern edge of a Truly Giant filtration marsh (the 227 square miles of northern Everglades habitat otherwise [...]]]> As I mentioned last week, you have to start early if you want to beat the August heat when birding the western areas of Palm Beach County. Here’s an example of how early I’m talking about: we’ve been on the road for a half-hour already, and have just made our first stop, STA-1W:

At 10 square miles, most places would probably consider STA-1W to be a giant filtration marsh, but this is Florida real estate: it’s all about location, location, location. Situated at the northwestern edge of a Truly Giant filtration marsh (the 227 square miles of northern Everglades habitat otherwise known as the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge), these 6670 acres seem pretty small by comparison. This stormwater treatment area (STA) has only recently (within the last couple of years) been brought online; its purpose is  to help filter the water that flows south from the Everglades Agricultural Area into the northern Everglades. A side benefit, though, is to create 10 square miles of habitat for wading birds, ducks, and other avifauna.

This morning we found Least Bittern, Pied-billed Grebe, Ruddy Duck, Ring-necked Duck, Blue-winged Teal, and Belted Kingfisher, along with the usual herons and egrets. Least Bittern is always a good bird, and this early in the season, it was nice to find RNDU and RUDU (if you’re a birder and you don’t know your banding codes, you should learn them).

After we left STA-1W, we went a bit farther west along County Road 880 and stopped at some sod fields at 6-Mile Bend. I was hoping to find Upland Sandpiper (UPSA), or perhaps some early-season Buff-breasted Sandpipers (BBSA), but we were unable to score these common but relatively hard-to-find birds. These are Code 1 birds, meaning that they occur widely and regularly in North America, although here in Florida you can only get them on migration. Even down here, though, in most years you should be able to find them—if you go out all the time and if you know where to look, and if you are persistent. I’ve never had the time to devote to that kind of birding, and doubt that I ever will. Which is why either of these would be life birds for me.

We continued on up to the farms, which are the main reason for today’s trip. As I had last Friday in advance of last Saturday’s field trip, Chuck, who is leading next week’s field trip, felt it important to scout the area. And even though I’m not able to make next week’s trip, I felt it important to tag along—after all, whenever you bird with Chuck, there’s a chance of getting some good birds!

As it turns out, the red dawn was a good portent for us; the cloud cover that made the dawn so spectacular held up throughout the day, so we didn’t have to experience the blazing heat we had last weekend. It seemed to help us find birds, too, as we had several more shorebird species than last weekend, and good numbers of them as well: 34 Wilson’s Phalaropes, 8 Willets, dozens of Pectoral and Stilt Sandpipers, and many Western and Semipalmated Sandpipers. We’re actually getting pretty good at separating these last two peeps, because here in Palm Beach County in August at least, many of the WESAs still have red scapulars, while the SESAs are grayer; the semipalms also seem to have a bit more upright posture than the westerns, and, as a final piece of the puzzle, wherever the bird in question is on the short- or long-billed end of the scale, it’s pretty simple to distinguish the shorter-billed SESA from the longer-billed WESA.

In all we had 59 species at the farms, and the trip total was 72. Not bad for a long morning’s work!

Here is a sequence of one of the many Willets (Tringa semipalmata) that we found:

I can’t recall ever seeing Willet out here myself before, although I know that other groups have seen them from time to time. And certainly finding 8 of them makes today stand out as a red-letter day.

But even more exciting was the high count of 34 Wilson’s Phalaropes! That’s a pretty good number for one flooded field. At one point we had a dozen of these little whirling dervish birds in the same telescopic field of view!

On the way back we stopped at 6-Mile Bend again. More on that later, but here’s the complete list of the 72 species we saw today, counting STA-1W, 6-Mile Bend, and the farms:

72 seen

Pied-billed Grebe
American White Pelican
Double-crested Cormorant
Anhinga
Great Blue Heron
Great Egret
Tricolored Heron
Little Blue Heron
Snowy Egret
Cattle Egret
Green Heron
Black-crowned Night-Heron
Yellow-crowned Night-Heron
Least Bittern
Wood Stork
White Ibis
Glossy Ibis
Roseate Spoonbill
Black-bellied Whistling-Duck
Blue-winged Teal
Ring-necked Duck
Ruddy Duck
Turkey Vulture
Osprey
Red-tailed Hawk
Purple Swamphen
Common Moorhen
American Coot
Black-necked Stilt
American Avocet
Black-bellied Plover
Semipalmated Plover
Killdeer
Short-billed Dowitcher
Long-billed Dowitcher
Upland Sandpiper
Greater Yellowlegs
Lesser Yellowlegs
Solitary Sandpiper
Spotted Sandpiper
Willet
Semipalmated Sandpiper
Western Sandpiper
Least Sandpiper
Pectoral Sandpiper
Stilt Sandpiper
Wilson’s Phalarope
Gull-billed Tern
Caspian Tern
Least Tern
Black Tern
Black Skimmer
Mourning Dove
Common Ground-Dove
Common Nighthawk
Belted Kingfisher
Bank Swallow
Barn Swallow
Northern Mockingbird
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
Loggerhead Shrike
European Starling
House Sparrow
Yellow Warbler
Yellow-throated Warbler
Prairie Warbler
American Redstart
Northern Waterthrush
Common Yellowthroat
Northern Cardinal
Red-winged Blackbird
Boat-tailed Grackle

You might notice that one of the birds above is in red type. Stay tuned!