season finale

On a chilly late August morning you may feel that your best-before date has come and gone, your colours have faded and your once-splendid wings are tattered. But by the warmth of the noon-day sun, when you’re sipping nectar from a silphium flower eight feet in the air, you can still make the most of the summer’s glories.

Ragged Red Admiral (click images for larger view)

Once-bright petals are curling and falling to the ground, but a new round of flowers is taking over in meadows and gardens.

Light-Emitting Dandelion

 

Aster

 

Meanwhile the marsh is alive with a profusion of dragonflies and damselflies.

Dark Dragon

 

Dragonfly Sky

 

Whether in the marsh, harbour or along the breakwater, the ducks are no longer skittish – they continue feeding while a kayaker drifts within a few feet.

Duck Diner 1

Duck Diner 2

An adult Black Crowned Night Heron is not a flashy bird, but this nearly full-grown juvenile shows real sartorial flare. (Correction, Aug 13 2018: after further study I’m convinced this is not a young Black Crowned Night Heron, but rather a Green Heron. See “Reading the Fine Print”, Aug 14, 2018)

One Fine Heron

Several Great Blue Herons can often be seen in one small part of Bowmanville Marsh.

Wingspan

Along this coast there is another distinct sign of summer’s end: salmon are approaching the mouths of creeks, and that means fishing charters linger near shore while hopeful anglers line the breakwater.

Observation

 

Illustration at top of page: Red Dragon and Blue Dragon

Festival of Wings

The gardens are filled with beating wings this month – wings of butterflies, bees, moths, damselflies, beetles and wasps. Many of them don’t like to sit still long, so trying to photograph them can be a great way to while away the hours.

Red admiral on white coneflower (click images for larger views)

There have been an encouraging number of monarchs along the north shore of Lake Ontario recently, and they are particularly attracted to the flowers of the Silphium perfoliatum, aka cup plant, carpenter’s weed, squareweed, compass plant. One of the monarchs I photographed had been tagged by Monarch Watch, and I hope to hear how far it has travelled so far and whether it makes it all the way to Mexico before winter.

Monarch on silphium perfoliatum

 

Earlier in the summer the bumblebees proved very difficult to photograph, but recently they’ve been slowing down to linger on the flowers of catnip.

Bumblebee on catnip flowers

 

Bumblebee on catnip 2

One bumblebee was carrying so much pollen that its pollen baskets swayed from side to side as it crawled over the flowers.

Bumblebee on catnip 3

How much of this pollen came from catnip? That’s hard to say, since the bees were also working over the silphium flowers the same afternoon.

Bumblebee on silphium flower

 

The beautiful swallowtail butterflies also tend to flash around the garden without settling long. But I learned that when a pair of them land in the same flower patch they are far more interested in each other, and it’s possible to get close enough for a good photograph.

Swallowtail coming in for a landing

 

Swallowtail on white coneflower

Not to be outdone, the northern flickers have also been feeding in the yard recently, and this one seems to say “Never mind about those little wings – have a look at this tail!”

Northern flash

gems of the garden

When you coax a wide variety of flowers and herbs into your garden you also attract a wide variety of insects. Although not all these inhabitants are a welcome sight, most are not only beneficial but also remarkably beautiful.

For instance, there’s this cute little caterpillar with the unwieldy name Eupithecia miserulata. Not only does it stand out sharply against the burgundy and gold of a rudbeckia blossom, but it grows up to be a striking gray-brown moth.

Eupithecia. (click photos for larger images)

 

Then there are the mud dauber wasps. Two different types have been visiting our fennel flowers recently.

Black mud dauber wasp

Black and yellow mud dauber wasp

Though they look fierce they seldom sting people. But the mud dauber wasps do prey on spiders, which are more than abundant in our lakeshore location, so we are very happy to have them.

 

A more common but no less striking visitor has also been attracted to the herb garden – musca domestica, aka housefly.

Musca domestica on fennel flower

Musca domestica on coriander flower

The red soldier beetle was introduced from Europe and is relatively new to Ontario. Its British common name, Hogweed Bonking Beetle, sounds simultaneously ominous and comical, and in fact it is a pollinator of the toxic plants cow parsnip and giant hogweed. However it also preys on aphids, slugs and snails.

Red soldier beetle on grass

Red soldier beetles on Hydrangea paniculata

Damselflies are a wetland insect, but our garden is just across the road from a marsh and so these glittery creatures have been alighting on the leaves of beans, tomatoes and dogwood.

Eastern forktail damselfly, female

Eastern forktail damselfly, male

Finally, we are fortunate to see many honey bees locally, including this one visiting a purple/blue borage flower.

Honey bee on borage