"Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces."
― Virginia Woolf
Birding has been really good at the creek corridor, but tiger beetles! Though I checked the rock wall at Pope Farm Conservancy just a few days ago, it wasn't quite warm enough for Six-spotted Tiger Beetles Cicindela sexguttata to be out and about. But since winds switched from the southeast, we've been having record high temperatures for May. I figured two days of temps in the upper 80s probably prompted this particular species to emerge. As per usual, I was correct.
The long rock wall that nearly bisects the prairies at Pope Farm has become my favorite spot for Six-spotted ― it seems like they tolerate closer approach compared to when you find this species on a long forest trail. My guess would be there's a lot of interfering structure they might not be able to process against a slowly approaching tiger beetle geek. Whatever the case may be, it's a great location for capturing stunning macro portraits of these gorgeous green little beasties.
Six-spotted Tiger Beetles demonstrate quite a bit of variation in terms of maculations (patterns, spots). If you look carefully you'll see the above beetle has four spots on one side of its elytra (hardened forewing), which means it's really an Eight-spotted! And you'll notice the spot size differential of the beetles in this series. On occasion, myself and my tiger beetle aficionados find some that have no spots. Incidentally, elytron in Ancient Greek is ἔλυτρον meaning sheath or cover.
Bird-wise, my posse scored 27 warbler species at the Pheasant Branch creek corridor yesterday (my record one-day warbler count there is 28). The best bird was a beautiful singing male Hooded Warbler, but we also got great views of Cerulean, Black-throated Blue, Prothonotary, Mourning, Cape May, Bay-breasted and many more. I think we tallied nearly 90 species for the outing. Alas, it was so hot I didn't feel like hauling around the digi-rig, so I left it at home. I still have about a week of vacation time yet, so there ought to be more May blog material coming soon. I sure hope you like insects, because come late May and early June that's all this blog will focus on.
All images © 2022 Mike McDowell