St. Louis’s Calvary Cemetery was featured in this segment on NPR this morning.
Category Archives: Odds and Ends
Scissor-tailed Flycatchers in Laclede County (and the value of the game Bird Bingo)
Several years ago I gave my grand-niece Tatyanna the game Bird Bingo (either for Christmas or her birthday—I don’t remember which). She’s since played it many times with me, her grandparents, and her great-grandmother.
My brother called me two days ago to tell me he had seen what he was sure was a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher on Highway 5 in Laclede County. It was perched on a wire, so he got a good look at it, and when he got home he looked up “Scissor-tailed Flycatcher” in the field guide (Kaufman)—it was a match. My brother isn’t a birder and doesn’t peruse the guides, memorizing every field mark as some of us do, so I was curious how he knew to look up that species, as it’s not an everyday bird: he knew of it from Bird Bingo.
Ah, educational toys.
The always entertaining Mallard
Note: This has been sitting in the drafts folder nearly two years!
Chuck told me about some interesting avian behavior that was observed by Kees Moeliker. Moeliker’s research won him an Ig Nobel prize.
Read all about it here:
Heat wave
The yard
Two weeks ago I wouldn’t have thought I’d be watering my hardy native perennials. Most of the plants seemed to be tolerating the extreme heat well, but when the Monarda fistulosa blooms began turning brown only a few days after blooming, I gave in and turned on the sprinkler.
On June 24, there were two Great Spangled Fritillaries in the yard nectaring on Echinacea purpurea. This morning there was another (or one of the two I saw three days ago), also nectaring on the coneflower.
What’s blooming
Flowers, wild and not
- Alcea sp.
- Aquilegia sp. (just barely!)
- Asclepias syriaca
- Asclepias tuberosa
- Blephilia ciliata
- Coreopsis verticillata ‘Moonbeam’
- Coreopsis verticillata (unknown variety)
- Echinacea paradoxa
- Echinacea purpurea
- Erysimum capitatum
- Glandularia canadensis
- Monarda fistulosa
- Monarda sp. (red ornamental variety)
- Oenothera speciosa (pink)
- Penstemon digitalis
- Pontederia cordata
- Pycnanthemum tenuifolium
- Senna marilandica
- Talinum calycinum
- Tradescantia sp.
- feral petunia
Shrubs
- Hibiscus syriacus
Grasses
- Chasmanthium latifolium
- Elymus (virginicus? hystrix?)
- Panicum virgatum
Getting ready to bloom
The button bush has six buds on it (I had resigned myself to waiting another year for it to bloom). Joe Pye has buds, as do Swamp and Purples Milkweeds.