On the Trails of
The Cary Institute

The Trails

• As I stepped out of the car at Gifford House a praying mantis landed on my shoulder and accompanied me for a while.
• Something was coming towards me on the path. Another mantis? No, a katydid? No, a huge sphecid wasp with a huger caterpillar!
• I slowly went to a squat as she dropped her paralysed prey in front of me and circled and zig-zagged until she uncovered the hidden entrance to her burrow.
• In a moment she and the caterpillar - the "green oak caterpillar" of the white-spotted prominent (moth) - disappeared down the hole.
• Then began the laborious process of hiding the nest. Larger pebbles were dropped down the hole, then smaller ones were dog-paddled on top from a radius of an inch or so.
• Finally, she "tilled" a circle a foot in diameter obliterating any sign she'd ever been there.
• The whole process took about 25 minutes from when I spotted her. And my foot felt obliterated from squatting that long.
• Oblivious to the horror below, a great spangled fritillary nectared peacefully on butterfly bush just above us.
• I stretched my legs along the Scots Pine Alleé pausing to examine the goldenrod called silver-rod and try the camera's close up mode.
• At the bottom of the Old Gravel Pit another caterpillar - of the brown-hooded owlet (moth) was eating another goldenrod.
• A little oak along the road to the Fern Glen held some caterpillar look-alikes: sawfly larvae - perhaps of croesus latitarsis.
• Nearby New England Aster was blooming.
• At the back of the Fern Glen pond, summer-sweet still had some of its tiny blooms.
• In the fall mowing schedule it was the back Old Hayfield's turn this year.
• The Sedge Meadow Trail was one of many places where dogwood sawfly larvae could be found. True caterpillars have up to 5 pairs of abdominal prolegs following the three pairs of true legs after the head. In this photo seven pairs of abdominal prolegs can be seen.
• A baby puffball was the last find this day.

Moths

• 1 Snowberry Clearwing

Birds

• 1 Great Blue Heron
• 2 Mourning Dove
• 1 Eastern Wood-Pewee
• 2 Red-eyed Vireo
• 13 Blue Jay
• 7 American Crow
• 10 Black-capped Chickadee
• 1 White-breasted Nuthatch
• 1 Wood Thrush
• 2 American Robin
• 2 Gray Catbird
• 2 Cedar Waxwing
• 1 Common Yellowthroat
• 2 Eastern Towhee
• 1 Northern Cardinal
• 1 American Goldfinch

Butterflies

• 24 Cabbage White
• 11 Clouded Sulphur
• 13 Orange Sulphur
• 15 Great Spangled Fritillary
• 3 Pearl Crescent
• 3 Common Ringlet
• 2 Monarch
• 9 Silver-spotted Skipper

Plants

• 1 Bottle gentian
• 1 Turtlehead
• 1 White wood aster

Caterpillars

• 1 Fall Webworm
• 1 Green Oak Caterpillar