Always Time for Middle Creek

The same day we took the butterfly tour at Fort Indiantown Gap, we decided to swing through Middle Creek on the way home.  I like going there on random summer days - it's always beautiful and the crowds are gone.  Plus you just never know what you're going to see!

I love the look of the summery meadows that take over so much of the open ground at Middle Creek in the warm months.  In truth, I was hoping for more butterflies, but they were sparse.  It was a pretty hot day, so maybe that had an effect.  The birds weren't out much, either.

There was a dragonfly, posing semi-nicely on a Common Mullein stalk near Stop #3.  I say semi-nicely because he stayed put for a long time, but never turned his butt away from the camera.  The internet tells me this is probably a Halloween Pennant, which I can see, given the black and orange color scheme.

Another treat to going in summer is that there's a spur road off of the Wildlife Drive that seems to be open only at this time of year.  Back this road, we found a Grasshopper Sparrow with some grub sitting on a fence post.

The spur road ends in a cup-de-sac by a pond and wetlands. Bird activity here was stronger, and there were also two White-Tailed Deer.  They amused me by wading out into the shallows of the pond.  In the meantime, Orioles, Catbirds, Goldfinches, Robins, and more were poking around and flying from bush to reed to tree.  All in all, one of my favorite spots in the Management Area!

Fort Indiantown Gap Miscellany

Here's the big group of us, after arriving at the range.  We got a good lecture on safety and respect for the habitat, and we listened because the guy was big and loud.  But, most of us also had our eyes on the field while our ears were on the instructions :)

There were plenty of things besides butterflies to be interested in, like this Ring-Necked Snake that was found by the herpetologist of the group.  Later he found a turtle, too.

This concluded our time at Fort Indiantown Gap, but it turns out that we had more outdoor adventures in store for us this particular day.  But more on that in the next posts.

More than Just the Regal

As you might imagine, habitat good for the Regal Fritillary is also good for lots of other winged denizens.  The butterfly tour consisted of a leisurely one mile loop through fields and meadows, with plenty of butterfly aficionados around to help you figure out what was what.

Full warning, I might mess these names up.  But I believe the butterfly above is a Spicebush Swallowtail, and I'm sure the one below is a Pipevine Swallowtail.  This one is pretty worn, but I think they are a particularly pretty butterfly.

Now we're back to the Spicebush on the thistle bloom.  It amazes me how differently the undersides of the wings can look from the tops.

It may be hard to tell, but here we have a much smaller butterfly, some sort of Copper, I think.  Maybe.

And here we have three Great Spangled Fritillaries, as identified by the person standing next to me as I took this photo.  I just noticed the small bee in front of the butterfly on the right.  It blended right in!

And some Skippers, resting on a Bee Balm, or Monarda, blossom.  

Near the end of the tour, when I thought the new kinds of butterflies were mostly behind us, I snapped this long shot of a colorful guy, and later was able to ID it as an American Lady.

So there's your whirlwind tour of the butterflies of Fort Indiantown Gap.  I heard that they do a bird tour in the spring, so that's definitely on my list now!

The Regal Fritillary

The Regal Fritillary has a unique relationship with Fort Indiantown Gap.  You see, this butterfly feeds on arrow leaf violets.  These violets like to grow in disturbed habitats - places where the soil is churned and turned over fairly frequently.

This habitat is in short supply in much of the nation.  However, military vehicles with tracks, like tanks, are great at creating it.  Once the Fritillaries were found at the Fort, the military began special conservation measures to ensure they continue to have a home.

One of their firing ranges is now more or less dedicated to the Fritillary.  We were never in unsafe areas, obviously, but signs like these did kind of raise the hairs on the back of your neck.

  

Here are a couple more of my Fritillary pics:

As you can see, these were not particularly shy.  They enjoyed their butterfly weed while many lenses snapped around them :)  

Military Might = Butterfly Flight?

In this case, definitely yes!

For quite a while, we have wanted to make it to Fort Indiantown Gap's butterfly tours.  They do them two weekends in July, and that's it.  Fort Indiantown Gap is Pennsylvania's large Army & National Guard training facility.  You get the impression that all manner of things happen here, and they probably do.

But here's the deal.  They put on an excellent show.  There were 5-6 naturalists traveling with the probably close to 200 citizens who came to tour.  Specialists in butterflies, plants, birds, and more.  At the beginning, a pavilion had a lot of mounted winged creatures and skulls.  Here are some mounts of what we were about to go find live in the field.

For example, above are a few of the swallowtail type of butterfly, and also the fritillaries and sulphurs.  Below is a skull that I have to believe belonged to a heron of some sort.  

I have to say, I thought perhaps two dozen people would be on this tour.  But I was wrong.  The guides told us they expect 150-200 people per day.  And this was definitely the military.  All 100 cars or so were lined up in precision order, and given instructions on how to leave the site and proceed to the firing range that is home to the butterflies.  Here's the starting line :)

Now, we saw many butterflies this day.  But the star attraction is the Regal Fritillary, a butterfly known in only a few places in Pennsylvania, if not just this one location.  But Fort Indiantown Gap and the Regal Fritillary have a complex history, one that I'll share in the next post. 

Before we arrived, the main concern was ... would we really see a Regal Fritillary?  Or would it be a long shot?  Well, we didn't have to worry.  There were scads, and even without the high numbers, the naturalists were out to find one for us to see up close:

Here you go, the Regal Fritillary, in all of its glory.  In case you haven't noticed, these guys have been the banner on my Facebook page for a while.

The other common fritillaries in the area are the Great Spangled Fritillary and the Aphrodite, both of which have an even orange wash on both fore and hind wings.  The Regal Fritillary's hind wings are a deep black, making it stand out from the fritillaries and also the Monarch.

The big question, of course, is why the Regal Fritillary chooses a firing range as its home.  But more on that later ...

Now for the Mountain Tops

As we headed out of Shenandoah, we hiked to what is apparently one of the few 360 degree views in the park.  So sayeth our guidebook, in any case.  

Bearfence  Mountain is home to a relatively short loop, if you want it to be, but part of it is a pretty decent rock scramble.  That being said, as promised, the views were more than worth the effort.

Here's Justin, mid-scramble.  This one wasn't terribly tough as far as it went, but one spot did have some precarious balancing that - I'll be honest - made me wig out.  But I made it!

Back at the trailhead, we found a small flock of Cedar Waxwings in a dead snag.  Here's a couple shots I got.  

And one Waxwing, vamoosing.  

There's one more thing I want to show you from this weekend.  We were out at the right time for Mountain Laurel to be in bloom.  While this is Pennsylvania's state flower, it's just as pretty in Virginia.  These were blooming behind the museum in Rapidan Camp.  

And with this, we'll leave Shenandoah behind, even though there's a few more adventures that didn't translate to photographs well :)

The Rest of Shenandoah

After visiting Rapidan Camp by trail, we returned to the campground to find our site surrounded by about a dozen hikers fresh off some long-distance hiking on the AT.  We thought maybe they'd be tired, and therefore sedate, but noooooooo.

We got tired of their extended and exaggerated loud yapping and so decided to go watch the sunset from one of the overlooks along Skyline Drive.

I took these shots with my phone, and took the opportunity to goof off with filters.  I like both effects, but I think the black and white edges out the color.  If you can't tell from the photos, this was both a beautiful and a relaxing evening.

The last rays of the sun caught a blooming shrub in a particularly nice way.  When I don't know what a shrub is, and it's flowering, a lot of times I'll say that I think it might be a viburnum.  So, folks, this is a viburnum ;)

And well, you know what?  I forgot one of the best parts of the campground.  Justin walked just a short ways into the woods from our site, looking for downed wood.  He wasn't gone long when I heard a "Pssst!" followed by a "Bring your camera!"  I could not imagine what would stay still long enough for me to get down there, much less take a picture.

Turns out it was this fellow - a very small fawn who was very suspicious of our activity.  Not wanting to cause any undue stress (life's hard enough!), we left pretty quickly and didn't alert anyone else to its presence.  

Shenandoah in June

I'm getting a little out of order here, but bear with me.  Exactly one week after we returned from Ireland, we made a quick weekend trip down to Shenandoah National Park.  We hit some fantastic weather - warm but not crazy hot, sunny with dramatic fogs and clouds.

This park more or less demands the use of the pano function on the old iPhone camera.  Anytime you get a view, it's usually miles of mountain blue and valley green and one frame doesn't catch nearly enough of it to give the proper scale.

These are a couple of the overlooks we encountered as we drove south.  We intended to camp but left the campground itself to chance.  Matthews Arm looked big and open and not overly inviting, so we decided to head further south, to Lewis Mountain Campground, which is the smallest in the park.

After we snagged a spot, we decided to hike down to Rapidan Camp.  Before this hike, we did not know that Herbert Hoover had a camp in Shenandoah.  Camp actually does not give you a sense of the size and complexity of the thing.  But this was a great spot to visit.

Actually, the biggest excitement happened just a few hundred yards along the trail.  We're zipping a long, and a bear pops up right next to the trail.  I screamed, it screamed.  It ran away, but not very far, and then followed us for about 100 feet.  Kept us hopping!

Rapidan Camp is at the bottom of this particular trail.  Not many of the buildings are left (there were a lot!), but a few cabins still stand, and so do the chimneys of a few others.  

There's a small waterfall along this trail.  We caught it as the sun was filtering through the trees above it.

And it turns out that we would have interesting wildlife encounters on the way down to the Camp and on the way back.  Near the top of the trail, we met a pair of white-tailed deer traveling downwards.  

We caught sight of them and stopped in our tracks, and watched them approach within about 50 feet of us before veering off to the left and looping around us.  

Orange & Yellow - Getting Started With Butterflies

Not too long after our return from Ireland, we went back to Fulton County to do some work at the farm, and also just to visit and enjoy some time in the country.  My Dad planted a wildflower patch at the farm that was in full swing in mid-June, attracting mostly fritillaries but also a few other winged denizens.

This is a Great Spangled Fritillary, or an Aphrodite, but I'm not sure which as they're very similar and I'm a little too lazy to get out the ID guide right now.

There was one Black Swallowtail in the patch.  These are striking, when most of the other colors in the vicinity are yellow, orange, and green.  The last type of butterfly I managed to get a still shot of was this guy, which I believe is some sort of sulphur, possibly a Clouded Sulphur.

Here's a wider shot, where you can see the bold blooms pulling these guys in, plus two more fritillary/aphrodite types.  I think there were 10 or more at any given time in this patch!

I called this post "Getting Started With Butterflies,"  because we have managed to have quite a few adventures with butterflies lately, and this is just the first one!

Irish Details - Dublin Part 3

Our last day in Ireland was spent hoofing it around town, catching a few things I'd seen before and a few new things, too.  All in all, a great day.

Our first stop was Trinity College, which has both the Book of Kells (an elaborately illuminated medieval copy of the Gospels) and the spectacular Old Library.  This is a panoramic shot of the inside of the Old Library.  Yes, that's two stories of floor to ceiling book shelves in ornate galleries.

Next up was a visit to the National Museum, which houses archaeological finds from all over the island.  Jewel-encrusted was a common descriptor :)

Then, a nice walk through two big public open spaces:  St. Stephen's Green and Merrion Square.  These are Mute Swans in the ponds at St. Stephen's.

The day also included traipsing through residential neighborhoods with the fancy Georgian doorways the city is so known for.

We ended the walking tour with a trip to the Chester Beatty Museum, located in Dublin Castle.  The Castle is a big sprawling office complex, of which only a small part looks anything like a castle.

I couldn't take pictures inside the museum here, but it was fantastic.  Chester Beatty collected early manuscripts and illuminated scrolls from around the world.  There are amazing exhibits on Japanese birds & flowers art, early copies of the Quran, fragments of early Bible texts, and so much more.

I could take pictures of the park-like Oriental Gardens inside the Castle walls.  Later this night, we decided to simply visit a supermarket and make a picnic dinner for our last meal in Dublin.  A nice thing about the city is that little and big markets are within walking distance, and prices are really no different than I would expect in the stores I normally shop at here.

We were able to pull this together for about 20 Euros, including some beverages.  A very nice way to end the day, and the trip!