BUTTERFLIES AND PRAIRIE FLOWERS

Monarch feeding on Butterfly Weed.

The number of Monarchs is down some from last year but we still have fairly good numbers that are now laying eggs on our milkweeds.

This poor beatup Monarch survived a long hard migration to reach our place.  It will lay eggs on our milkweeds and then die, leaving the next generation to head south in the fall.

Great Spangled Fritillary.  This is the most common butterfly on our 23 acres of land.  It likes moist meadows and we have about 10 acres of prime habitat.

Buckeye butterflies are not native to Minnesota but they do often migrate this far north during the summer.  Most summers we do see a few of these

Male Widow Skimmer dragonfly.  The dragonflies are now cruising for insects on our grasslands. This species is quite common and is a good two inches+ long. We try to photograph them before about 10 in the morning-they get quite active after the day warms up.

Female Widow Skimmer dragonfly.

Some friends of our brought us this Golden Digger Wasp.  It is large(1.3 inches) and was living in a hole in their flower bed.  They watched the wasp carry grasshoppers to the hole and stuff the grasshopper into the hole.

PRAIRIES CONTINUE TO PUT ON A FLOWER SHOW

Rattlesnake-master is an unusual almost cactus-like plant that grows on good prairie sites. It took us years to get this going on our little one acre prairie.

Wasp pollinating Rattlesnake-master bloom.

Wild Bergamot

Black-eyed Susan.

Culver's Root

Early Sunflower.  The sunflower family will give us a show for the next month or so.

The 6 ft. tall Cup Plants are doing well this year-we are 14 inches above normal for precipitation and they prefer it wet.

Yellow or gray-headed Coneflower.  One of our favorite prairie/ditch flowers.

Hyssop.  The leaves of this species of Hyssop have a distinct anise smell.

Minnesota state flower. the Showy (pink and white) Lady-slipper.  Photo by Bruce Lees.

We have several Dickcissels nesting along the driveway this year.

Male Hummingbird.  The males are usually busy chasing all other hummers away from our two feeders but we have just had a new hatch and they now tolerate others at the feeders.  We are going through about 2 quarts/day of nectar right now.

Goldfinch feeding on Goat's Beard flower down.

American Bittern in full breeding plumage.  Photo courtesy of Bruce Lees.

1 foot long Red-bellied snake.  Some years we see dozens of these on our driveway.

OREGON A GREAT PLACE TO VISIT

Some friends of ours were nice enough to invite us to visit them in Bend, Oregon.  Bend sits in a basin just east of the Cascade Range. The twin peaks you see in the photo above are volcanic mountains called the Sisters.  In the evening we could sit on the front porch and view the tops of these-a very good way to end a day.   They gave us the "royal tour".  We took in the high desert, the mountains, and the ocean views of Oregon.  So even though this is "Nature Notes of S.E. Minnesota" we thought our blog visitor might like to see what we photographed on our "royal tour" of Oregon.

The snow-capped peak of Mount Jefferson.  One of the great volcanic peaks of the Cascade Range in Oregon.  Mount Jefferson has been silent for a long, long time.  But the Cascades are still active as attested to by the 3,000 year old black lava flow in the foreground.

Mount Jefferson viewed thru much younger lava flows.

CRATER LAKE OREGON

One of the Cascades great volcanoes blew its top over a millenia ago and gave us this spectacular national park.  Crater Lake is just plain beautiful, spectacular, and so blue it makes the mountain skies look pale.

There is no way to describe the deep blue color of Crater Lake.  It is beyond any shade of blue that one has previously seen.

The younger cinder cone volcano called Wizard Island inside the much larger crater of Mount Mazama that is now filled with water to create Crater Lake.

Our Bend friends have trained this Scrub Jay to come and beg for peanuts-which it does often.  But, as with all birds we feed, I wonder who has trained whom???(or is it whom has trained who)???
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We saw several Clark's Nutcrackers at Crater Lake.

OREGON COAST

Our friends from Bend took us on a tour of the Oregon coast in the
Depoe Bay area.  It is a special place!

THE PACIFIC OCEAN IS BOTH FORBIDDING AND BEAUTIFUL

TIDAL POOL LIFE

We risked life and limb to scramble down a steep, rocky hillside to view the life in the tide pools at low tide.  It was well worth the effort.  One of the tidal pools is shown above.

Colorful kelps and sea weeds were exposed at low tides.

The purple sea urchins were very abundant in the tidal pools.

These starfish had just been exposed as the tide went out.

This sea star or starfish was about 8 inches across.

This particular tidal pool had many green sea anemones in it.  Some were open and some were closing. 

This little tidal pool was only about two feet across but loaded with life.

Top view of chiton in exposed tidal pool.

Under side of the chiton is almost snail-like.  (one of the locals found this and showed it to us).

MUSEL, CLAMS, SNAILS AT LOW TIDE

The tidal pools exposed a wide variety of musel, clams, etc at low tide-being from Minnesota we did not know the specific species of each but found them interesting.