The Marsh Project Week #31

So a few weeks were skipped.  One week I was preparing to deliver the College Student to her new abode, the second week I was on the road, and the third week I was recovering from the first two weeks and trying to get a handle on the now-realized fact that I'm down to one resident teenager.  The house is definitely much quieter, it seems to be staying just a little cleaner, and the rapid consumption of groceries seems to have slowed down just enough to be noticeable.

It's transition time at our house, and apparently it's transition time out at the marsh as well, because once I returned from my multi-state driving adventure and hit the trails, I discovered that even though it is still hot outside, there's been a shift in what I'm observing and what I'm not seeing anymore.  I'm honestly ready for the heat to subside, and for fall to start heading my direction, so while it seems that some of my favorite dragonflies have moved on, I'm looking forward to see what September brings. I've been fortunate enough to see one visitor traveling through on its own road trip, the yellow warbler.  They apparently like to hide among the lily pads on the marsh, and if you sit quietly you may see one flying from stem to stem.

I am noticing a lot of common green darner dragonflies.  I seem to observe these beautiful green and blue dragonflies more at the beginning and ending of summer and not so much in the middle.  Waiting for one to settle is usually an exercise in futility; once they get going, they don't stop. Every now and then, however, I'll be walking down the trail and I'll see one hanging from a tree branch.  Since I returned, I haven't seen any of the other darners I usually see on this trail- the swamp darners and the regal darners have made themselves scarce.

The butterflies, however, are starting to pick up just a wee bit.  On the trail this week, I've noticed several monarch butterflies, along with one viceroy trying to trick me into thinking it was a monarch with its similar orange and black coloring. I still haven't seen many common buckeyes, which is usually a fairly common butterfly, but this has not been a good year (or maybe they just all went to a different trail!). The Eastern tiger swallowtails are out flying around; I saw three on my last hike- although none of them wanted to be still long enough to be photographed. I'm excited about the monarchs; it didn't seem like we had a good spring for monarchs but maybe this fall will be better.

On one hike this week, I noticed something a little different- a large mushroom growing out of a dead tree trunk.  It was hard to get a great photo of it, but I was able to see and photograph enough of the underside gills for iNaturalist to suggest that this might be a rosegill mushroom.  I didn't take the mushroom cap to do a spore print, so I may never know an exact ID.  The cap was bigger than my hand.

Seen on the trail: Common green darner, common whitetail, Eastern pondhawk, slaty skimmer, widow skimmer, monarch, viceroy, Eastern tiger swallowtail, black swallowtail, Eastern giant swallowtail, cloudless sulfur, red admiral, green heron, great blue heron, snowy egret, little blue heron, northern cardinal, Carolina chickadee, yellow warbler, hummingbird (it was moving too fast for a more specific ID), scissortailed flycatcher, Eastern phoebe, green tree frog, broad-banded water snake, rough green snake, armadillo, raccoon, one very cool large mushroom (rosegill?).