Common Grackle (Quiscalus quiscula) - I have been feeding birds for many years and this is a 1st time I have had a grackle this time of the year at my feeders.
Thousands of migrating Common Grackles (Red-winged Blackbirds and European Starlings also part of the flock) passed through my yard this morning. The birds were everywhere...on the ground, in the trees, flying and the birds kept coming. The volume of sound the birds produced was amazing and the flight of the migrating flock was a spectacular sight!!!
Today my hubby found a Painted Turtle sitting in the middle of the county road so of course he to stopped to rescue the turtle. Where we live there is not the right kind of habitat for turtles so we released the turtle this evening near a slough about five miles from the river.
77 out the 91 Spurge eggs hatched on August 14, 2013. Want to know more…check out http://bugguide.net/node/view/819473 for on more info on the eggs that were given to me from Carl Barrentine . Carl’s website is Dakota Naturalist.com . I captured this image of the Spurge hawkmoth during the celebration of National Moth Week 2013.
Information below onDakota Naturalist.com events I attended during National Moth Week 2013. “A Second Evening with Moths,” with Dr. Jerry Fauske, Entomologist, NDSIRC/NDSU, at Turtle River State Park, Saturday, 8:00-11:00 p.m., 20 July; and we’ll go Night-lighting for Moths at the TRSP after Jerry’s presentation! I really enjoyed listening to Carl Barrentine who filled in for Dr. Jerry Fauske!!! “What Moths can tell us about the History of North Dakota,” with Dr. Jerry Fauske, Research Specialist and Collections Manager at the North Dakota State Insect Research Collection, Room 253, O’Kelly Hall, UND Campus, Thursday, 7:00 p.m., 25 July. I captured this image the evening of July 21st shortly before it started raining. Lightning strikes are electrical discharges on a massive scale between the atmosphere and an earth-bound object. They mostly originate in thunderclouds and terminate on the ground, called Cloud to Ground (CG) lightning. However, they may also be initiated from a very tall grounded object and reach into the clouds.
Although "a lightning strike" is commonly used to describe all lightning, it is rather erroneous and a misnomer, as only about 25% of all lightning events worldwide are CG. The large bulk of lightning events are Intracloud (IC) or Cloud to Cloud (CC), where discharge only occurs high in the atmosphere. The scientific name for the complete process of a single lightning event is "flash", and a flash is a very complex, multiple stepped interaction, which is not completely understood. Most CG flashes only "strike" one physical location, referred to as a termination. The primary conducting channel, the bright coursing light you may see and call a "strike", is only about one inch in diameter, although to our eyes it looks much larger. They are miles long, upwards of tens of miles. The entire flash lasts only a few fractions of a second, and most of it is not visible to human eyes. 9 of the 10 nest boxes with Tree Swallows nestlings fledged between July 11 thru July 15th in my backyard. 3 boxes had one egg and 1 box had three eggs left after nestlings fledged. 4 other nest boxes were never used this breeding season. Today nest box #10 the first egg hatched this afternoon. Nestlings should fledge in 16 to 24 days.
The Twin-spotted Sphinx (Smerinthus jamaicensis) is a moth of the Sphingidae family. It is widely distributed across North America and is found everywhere except in the southern half of western California. It has been taken as far north as the Yukon.
It has a wingspan of 13⁄4–31⁄4 inches (4.5–8.3 cm), with the outer margins of the forewings unevenly scalloped, but with the coastal margin of hindwings being almost straight. Males have gray with black and white markings on their forewings, while females are yellowish brown with dark brown and white markings. Both sexes have red hindwings with a pale yellow border. Sometimes a blue patch may appear as a single eyespot or it may be divided by black bands, creating two or three eyespots. Adult moths are nocturnal, but seem to prefer the earlier part hours of the night. The larvae feed on Apple (Malus sylvestris), Prunus species (such as plums and peach), Ash (Fraxinus), Elm (Ulmus), Poplar (Populus), Birch (Betula) and Willow (Salix). The Brown-headed Cowbird is a brood parasite, meaning it lays eggs in nests of other species. A female cowbird quietly searches for female birds of other species that are actively laying eggs. Once she has found a suitable host, the cowbird will sneak onto the resident bird’s nest when it is away, usually damage or remove one (or more) egg, and replace that egg with one (or more) of her own.. The foster parents then unknowingly raise the young cowbirds, usually at the expense of their own offspring. Cowbird eggs require a shorter incubation period than most other songbirds and thus usually hatch first. Cowbird nestlings also grow large very quickly. These advantages allow them to command the most food from their foster parents, usually resulting in reduced nesting success of the host species.
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