A Pleasant Evening at the Preserve

 Monday night I settled into a spot at dusk near the northwest corner of the norther n tract to see what was flying  after dark.

In the meantime I was treated with a glorious sunset as the rainclouds cleared.

As the sun set, I could hear the booming of a Common Nighthawk, which still finds summer refuge here.

A pair of bats came zooming in above the fire lane from the lowland forest to the west.

As the darkness deepened, my lighted sheet began to become animated.

Burrower bugs landed in the first wave, followed by various species of scarabs, including a small light brown  individual  that was initially identified as a sand-loving scarab.

As usual, I was hoping for moths and eventually a few appeared.

The Southern Emerald was the first and later a Subject Lichen Moth and some micros of various species  arrived, but they remained outnumbered by the beetles.

Butterfly list grows

The Garberia is in bloom all over the preserve, offering the main nectar source for pollinators in late fall in scrub.

This week I found a Monk Skipper, which is my first sighting of this species here.
It is the 56th butterfly species I have observed here during the past 17 years of monitoring the site.
That is a respectable number for a small site in the middle of an industrial /commercial/residential area.
Some other recent additions to the butterfly list included Three-spotted Skipper and Polydamas Swallowtail.

I also photographed a Polka Dot Wasp Moth on the Garberia.
This is a fairly common diurnal moth, but I can't recall whether I had seen one here.

The explained and unexplained decline of rare plants

Little by little,  fewer individuals of some listed plants are visible here.
First came the Giant Orchids, which went from 25 to 0 as a result of the heavy equipment used for mechanical clearing before the site's first burn in 2008.
Last year some heavy tractor work along the north fire lane in the south tract made 300 Polygonella basiramia disappear, at least temporarily.

The latest decline involved Scrub blazing star (pictured above), which was a common sight along the north-south trail in the north tract. This week, at the height of the flowering period,  I found only one.
The area along the path had been mechanically cleared within the past year.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's recovery plan for this species  recommends preventing this plant being run over by off-road vehicles. I assume this would apply to equipment used for bush-hogging falls into this category.
I found a small group of about 7 plants along a new cleared path east of the path.
I have been unable to find any west of the path where the most were located during a survey about 10 years ago.
I don't have any idea why those plants are missing.
Anyway, the total number from the earlier survey was 40 plants and now there are about a half a dozen.
This merits a further examination.

Stuff that flies in the night and day

I set up a monitoring station site the other day
to set up a light to resume moth surveys,
In late afternoon when I was bringing in materials
 I saw a group of about 10 migrating Chimney
 Swifts feeding overhead.
After dark the  traffic is still a little slow. I had
a few moths and beetles, several leafhoppers
 and a couple of species of roaches.
There were also mosquitoes.
One of the leafhoppers was unusually colorful
 with an interesting design and the exotic roach
 was more colorful than native species. Interestingly
, no sand cockroaches showed up that evening
though they regularly appear.

Moths & Milkweed

I made an interesting discovery this week.
While I was wrapping up some exotics control around dusk, I saw a  couple of Harlequin Moths on Curtiss' Milkweed.

I had seen these moths in the preserve before,, but I had never seen moths of this species nectaring before.

Typically, sphinxes and flower moths do this, but from what I've read, most other moths do not. In fact, many moths do not feed much in their adult stage.

Scrub's Summer White

White flowers are everywhere in the scrub at Lake Blue this summer.

                                       Curtiss' Milkweed

                                       Pine Catchfly

                                    Milkweed Seed Pod and Milkweed Bug

There's Curtiss' Milkweed, Pine Catchfly, Feay's Palaox, Elliott's Milk Pea and Sandlace. Another white natural object is the opening seed pod for Butterfly Weed, which has orang flowers. Inside the seed pod is a Large Milkweed Bug.

It's hot, but there's lot to see.

Beetles & More

I checked to see whether more Polyphylla beetles were showing up at the preserve. Only one came to my light, along with some click beetles, an ant lion and some moths and smaller insects.

I did find one new moth, which has been confirmed.

Maybe next year the population will be more numerous.

Moth Among The Momordica

I was checking the plants in the sandhill area over the weekend when I saw something fly in the tangle of exotic vegetation that surrounds the preserve's endangered habitat.

It was a small moth, but what kind.

I got a brief look at saw that it was one of a group of moths with a tufted-looking tail  (anal tufts to you lepidopterists out there) , a Melonworm Moth (Diaphania hyalinata).

This common species is found in squash and melon patches, which is why it was thriving in a tangle of Momordica, an exotic vine that produces squash-like fruit.

New species to the invert list, by the way.   .
 

The beetles are back

I had been fruitlessly mon itoring for beetles for a researcher since late March with no luck. Thursday night one finally showed. Now that they're out,we'll see what the population is like. They didn't emerge last year and I was beginning to get worried this year, but we'll see. The Common Nighthawk that kept me companylast year didn't show. So far, no Chuck will's Widow is calling from the pines, though I flushed one the other day.

It was a good day to burn

Today was the first day Lake Blue had been burned in a planned way--ever.

I was an observer, watching the professionals at work..

I learned that the first thing you need to do is to burn a "black line," a line of burned area next to the fire lane that will help to contain the overall burn so that it doesn't jump the fire lane as easily.

Today's burn was sligthly complicated by my discovery last weekend of two spots where Scrub Lupine had sprouted for the first time ever documented by anyone to our knowledge. As a result of the fire more lupine may sprout. We just don't know.

The idea was to protect the plants we know about from fire until they've had a chance to bloom and produce seeds.

The other thing I learned a little more about is why wind matters. I knew wind direction mattered because you plan who the wind will affect. In this case, the plan was to make sure most of the smoke avoided the nearby residences as much as possible. The results were mixed. In the afternoon the wind shifted and was coming from the north, which meant it was pretty smoky for awhile in one of the adjacent neighborhoods.

The other factor is wind speed. You like it to have a little speed, 10 mph or so, I was told, to move the fire quickly through the landscape.

In addition, you want the fire mostly out by dark so smoke doesn't settle and become a major nuisance or safety hazard.

There was another interestsing effect. At various times of the day all of his had insects land on us. They varied. There were treehoppers, mantises, grasshoppers, beetles and true bugs.

Finally, I will obviously and not unexpectedly have more tash to cleanup now that I can see it more clearly on the bare, burned ground.

I've been waiting and hoping for this for years. It was a good day. Thanks, everyone.

Tarflowers, not tarballs

One of the few showy blossoms at the moment in the scrub is the Tarflower, which is pretty widespread in scrub and scrubby flatwoods.

The plant gets its name from the sticky tarlike chemical on the flowers. The adhesive chemical traps some small insects, though I'm not exactly sure how that benefits the plant, which also attracts other pollinators.

They're relatively prominent shrubs in the aftermath of the mechanical clearing.

Roaches

I'm up to six species of roaches at Lake Blue Scrub.

I found the lastest addition when I was doing some night insect surveys earlier this spring.

The species list is:

Sand cockroach (Arenivaga floridensis)

American cockroach (Periplaneta americana)

Florida woods cockroach (Eurycotis floridana)

Wood roach (Parcoblatta sp.)

Pennsylvania wood roach (Parcoblatta fulvesence)

Green banana cockroach (Panchlora nivea)

Rain arrives in plenty

It has rained over the past two days. I checked the gauge this evening and it read 2 inches.

The Bonamia is beginning to bloom. The vines are plentiful across the landscape.

Polanisia tennufolia is in bloom, too.

This evening a Great Horned Owl flew across the landscape as I was setting up for night insect work. The sky tonight was lovely. It was that bright early evening blue, perhaps clarified by the rain, which gets rid of haze.

The bug survey was uneventful. Ant lions, a few beetles, moths, leafhoppers and flies, but nothing I was hoping for.

Bugs and benches

I'm still doing some regular evening bug monitoring to see what the light will attract.

I prepared the bench that was one of the insect observation platforms and installed a second on the north side to replace the one that was vandalized a couple of years ago.

Meanwhile, a Common Nighthawk makes its regular sortie over the open preserve sky, but this week I didn't hear the Chuck-will's-widow. Maybe it moved on.

I'm still slowly mining trash from the windrows along the north fire lane. I want to get some of the work done before the area becomes overgrown again.

Insects of the night

I went out this evening to see what was moving in the preserve at night.

I was walking around to see what was flying near dusk.I saw a Sand Roach on a Nolina brittonia bud. Two came to the light, along with what appeared to be an Alabama Underwing as well as common beetles, other unknown moths and some ants and flies.

Maybe things will pick up in a couple of weeks.