Caterpillars!

Despite countless admonitions from my mom to look out for snakes when we hit the trails, we're nearly always looking up. True, we do find the occasional bird slithering on its belly, but mostly, the things we're interested in are in the trees. And how much must we be missing! Entirely by accident, we (nearly) stumbled on a couple of exciting caterpillars several weeks ago, while we were exploring nearby Whitemarsh Preserve.

The first of these chunky grubs looked like it had seedling conifers sprouting all over the length of its body. These bright green fireworks made it so unlike any other caterpillar we've seen that it instantly jumped to the top of my short list for charismatic insect of the year (a distinction I've created in its honor). It wasn't until later that we discovered that this was an Io Moth (Automeris io) caterpillar. Not surprisingly (we certainly didn't need to be told after looking at it), the bristles are stinging to the touch -- woe to the dog who finds it along the walking trails! (Mythology tangent: the name Io is reference to the caterpillar's sting. Zeus, in trying to conceal Io from Hera transformed her into a white heifer; Hera, outranged, consequently sent a gadfly to sting Io into madness.)

Wandering away, and still high on our good fortune, we came across another awesome find - this time an Imperial Moth caterpillar. At first, we thought it may have been a Luna Moth caterpillar (we're anxious to find a Luna Moth of any age), but these plump little fella's hardly inspire disappointment. We did feel pity, though. We found him right in the middle of a well-traveled footpath, where he was evidently oozing viscera out one end. Unfortunately, its flashy colors couldn't catch the eye of whichever jogger or bicyclist it was who trod over it. 

And just a little ways away, we found another Imperial Moth caterpillar. This was was also right in the middle of the path, although, it seemed not to have been stepped on (yet). With the fate of its cousin fresh in our minds, we took care to move this one off to the side before any new tragedy unfolded. 

With any luck, we'll get to see either of these species as adults someday soon, short-lived as they are (both are members of the family Saturniidae, which have vestigal mouthparts and do not feed). We still have yet to find any saturniids in the wild.

In a somewhat related vein, we also recently visited the butterfly garden at the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge across the river in South Carolina. I mention this mainly because I took a photo of a Monarch chrysalis with my phone, which I'm particularly keen to show off (just look at how that dew glistens!).

 
And for good measure, also hanging about was an especially photogenic (because it was dead) Fiery Skipper. And that, I believe, neatly concludes our brief journey through the life cycle of the Lepidoptera.

Yurt Life

In mid-August, we took a weekend-long road trip 3 hours northwest to Macon. Maureen had been invited to give a talk at the monthly meeting of the Ocmulgee Audubon Society about the natural history of Skidaway Island where she had been working as a naturalist for the state park, and brought along lots of fossils to boot (the whole thing was great!).

Maureen Leong-Kee, Naturalist

 
The trip was also a perfect excuse us to see more of Georgia than we had. We love our marshes here in the "low country", as they call it, but Georgia's geography becomes much more interesting and varied as you travel farther inland, until finally reaching the Blue Ridge Mountains in the north. We've been starved for a change of landscape for a while now, as Florida, like Savannah, is essentially flat and marshy. I would have been happy to see even a slight incline after all of our time on the level, but we managed much more than that. Maureen found us a great campsite at High Falls State Park, which, as the names suggests, has a scenic series of waterfalls cutting across the grounds. 

Best of all, we got to sleep in a yurt. A yurt is a style of housing that I'll describe as being essentially a cross between a tent a a teepee. It's more comfortable than sleeping on the ground in a tent, but still gives the sense of being in nature. The birding began as soon as we stepped out of the car, with several Eastern Wood-pewees using the surrounding trees as a landing base in between bouts of catching insects in mid-air. An Eastern Kingbird, a large group of Brown-headed Nuthatches, a Pine Warbler, and a pair of Carolina Wrens were also calling and flitting above our yurt while the sun set behind High Falls Lake. 

Outside our Yurt. High Falls Lake is just off to the left.

Inside our luxurious yurt. It was surprisingly roomy inside, like camping in one of the tents from Harry Potter.

Eastern Wood-peewee

The next morning we met up with James Fleullan, president of Macon's local Audubon chapter, and an all-around knowledgable nature-lover. He led us out to some sod farms, where we had high hopes of finding Buff-breasted Sandpipers, which had been seen there recently. They happened to elude us, but it's hard to feel sorry for yourself when we had half a dozen Uplands practically in our laps, and easily a hundred Pectoral Sandpipers milling about. We'd seen an Upland in south Florida last year, but had it marked BVD (better view desired) in our life list. We were more than happy to drop the asterisk after these terrific looks at an awesome migrant. 

Upland Sandpiper

  

Beside "grasspipers", our other target was Horned Lark. From the reports we'd read, we expected to be practically tripping over them. In the end, we did get our lifer lark, albeit, as a speck in the scope. Lose one BVD, gain another… c'est la vie! Honestly, we were happily surprised when we learned that they were reliable in Georgia at all, and now we've got something to look forward to next time we go back. Copious Blue Grosbeaks, and singing Field Sparrows rounded out a fantastic morning at the sod farms.

Blue Grosbeak

Northern Rough-winged Swallows

A little later we witnessed a medley of raptors at Ocmulgee National Monument. A Mississippi Kite, a couple of Turkey Vultures, three Red-tailed Hawks, and a Broad-winged Hawk were all swirling around together in a vortex of awesome when the pint-sized Broad-wing started getting aggressive with one of the Red-tails. After making a few passes, the Broad-wing went its own way, but this was the first time we'd ever seen these two side by side, and allowed me to realize just how much larger Red-tails are. Other than that, Ocmulgee was notable for an abundance of butterflies. We tried to keep up as James called out some of the more interesting species, but we were happy to defer to his expertise, realizing that we've got a long way to go before we can tell our Commas from our Question Marks.

Question Mark

Fiery Skipper

Fiery Skipper