A Field Guide to July
The spring birding seasons is winding down. But as the dawn bird chorus now fades from our northern woodlands, fields and wetlands erupt in the sparkle and drama of summer insects. Here’s a short guide to some of the other glitter on the wing this month.
A Flower Trap
With its foot stuck in a milkweed flower like a Chinese finger trap, the European Skipper was struggling to free itself. On another flower nearby only a leg remained from…
A Water Lily’s World
At the height of summer many ponds are covered in lily pads. Moose munch on them. Beaver and muskrat devour them. Deer consider them delicious. But peer a little closer and you’ll find an amazing miniature world inhabiting each floating leaf.
iNaturalist Vermont Flies Past 100,000 Observations
With a tap on his smartphone and a click to submit to iNaturalist Vermont, Charlie Hohn added the 100,000th record on Friday, a beautiful Pink Lady’s Slipper orchid.
Finding Ferns
We found 22 fern species during an iNaturalist Vermont walk with interns and citizen naturalists on a two-hour tour of Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park. Led by VCE’s Kent McFarland and Park ecologist, Kyle Jones, the group was able to document 17 of those with photos in iNaturalist Vermont, a project of the Vermont Atlas of Life.
A Ghost in the Making Released Online
A Ghost in the Making: Searching for the Rusty-patched Bumble Bee, an enchanting short film about the disappearance of the Rusty-patched Bumble Bee and one man’s journey to find out what’s happened to it, is now available to watch online.
Vermont iNaturalist Discovers a New Population of a Rare Dragonfly
As a novice photographer, James Welch enjoys documenting the biodiversity he sees around his home turf. With his camera in hand while walking his dog last week, Welch stumbled upon a rare find.
Mansfield Update: Hardy Survivors and a Site-faithful Sharpie
After forced cancellation of a planned field trip to Mt. Mansfield in early June, when wind chills on the ridgeline plummeted to 14 degrees F, VCE returned on June 15-16. The avian chorus was subdued, but the hardiness of resident birds was evident. A male Sharp-shinned Hawk banded in 2013 was a surprise returnee in our nets.
A loon and eagle having a showdown
I was literally in the middle of a stand-off between two showy birds.
Reports of color-banded birds are rolling in!
Reports of color-banded Gray Catbirds and Song Sparrows are now showing up regularly on eBird checklists from the Buzzell Bridge Road and Mystery Trail areas of Union Village Dam thanks to keen observers like Mary Waugh, Jenn Megyesi, and Kathy Thompson.
Looking for WHIPs in all the Wrong Places
Monday, May 30th marked the close of stage 1 of VCE’s 2016 Eastern Whip-poor-will (WHIP) surveys for team Sara/h (Sara Zahendra and Sarah Carline). This session was a far cry from West Haven.
Across the Kingdom, VCE Birdathon a Boreal Success
The Green Mountain Goatsuckers mixed it up this spring, opting for a new approach and venue. We migrated to Vermont’s fabled birding mecca – the Northeast Kingdom, and we made a key strategic move by enlisting the Kingdom’s foremost birding guru, Tom Berriman, as our local guide.
