Pollinator season

We’re lucky to have a yard with many native plants that provide food and shelter for local wildlife. Some of the visitors have been pollinators–butterflies and bees–and things that feed on them.

Joe-Pye weed

The pollinators love this plant. I do not have high confidence in my IDs; I checked https://www.butterflyidentification.org/ for my area and made my best guess.

Canadian tiger swallowtail

This is the one that caught my partner’s attention. This canadian tiger swallowtail is what caught my partner’s attention. Its wings appear to have bites taken out of them; perhaps a bird got to it.

Monarch

As I understand it, monarch butterflies and viceroy butterflies are distinguished by a horizontal band on the lower wing; this one lacks the band, so it’s a monarch. I’m not very confident in that though!

Bee

I’ve not bothered to ID this. Drop me a line if you know what kind of bee this is!

Coneflower

Elsewhere in the yard, a spicebush swallowtail visited some coneflowers.

And some birds for good measure

You didn’t think I’d just post bugs, did you?

A juvenile blue jay; note the pink gape at the corner of its mouth.

I didn't set my shutter high enough to catch the details of this fight. Motion blur is a way to represent action, right?

Red-bellied woodpecker, getting ready to do some woodpekcing.

Red-bellied woodpecker, hard at work.

See the equipment page for the hardware and software I used.

All photos by Charles Eckman. All rights reserved, but contact me if you want to use these photos for something.