Sunday August 30, 2015 - Notes 2

 
  Weather Notes for Sunday the 30th
  Bird Sightings and Absences
  Insects Seen 
  Bat Sighting at Dusk

  Sunday August 30th turned out to be partly sunny for most of the day with cumulus clouds really piling up through the middle to late afternoon. There were also a lot of altocumulus clouds around. It was a very hazy and humid day (and I believe that we still had a lot of high-altitude smoke drifting in from wildfires that were blazing in the Pacific Northwest and the Southern Great Plains). Isolated cells of showers and even some isolated thunderstorms sprang up in Central Indiana from afternoon through evening. Between 6:00 PM - 6:30 PM one cell of heavy rain passed through downtown Indianapolis from Southwest to Northeast, and sprinkles of rain started falling on the Southeast Side from it. It just missed us; there was even sunshine coming down as it was raining! We ended up getting just a trace of rain from this system.

  Sunday's morning low was 69°F while the afternoon high reached 87°F. Dew Points wandered around between the upper and lower 60's°F all day. Winds were mostly light with some moderate gusts around noon and late afternoon. It was a humid and summer-like day, and many more were in the forecast for the upcoming week.

  Birds still don't seem to be very active, but I did see a lot of American Robins, Northern Cardinals, and Blue Jays today; especially during the late morning.

  Perhaps more importantly, even though I spent a lot of time by the creek, I didn't see or hear a single Red-Winged Blackbird today. In fact, I don't think I've seen any throughout August. They were still very active there in July, but they must have moved out once breeding season was done.

  I also didn't see or hear any Chimney Swifts today. I looked for them as sunset neared and as dusk was coming on, but saw none. I DID spot one lone Little Brown Bat zipping over the back yard as the sky was getting dark.

  I spent a lot of time in my first entry today writing about Dragonflies, but insect life is peaking these days, and there's a lot more to write about.

  Cicadas are still everywhere and their buzzing went on all day long. Crickets are all over the lawn and the weedy areas, chirping all through the daylight hours and increasing their volume after dark. Other Long-Horned Grasshoppers can be heard buzzing outside through the day and then, after dark, the buzzing, whirring, and clicking becomes extremely loud.

  Monarch Butterflies are still fluttering around all over our area and are still often visiting that patch of Narrow-leaved Milkweeds that grow next to my backyard shed. During late afternoon, I spotted a Monarch Caterpillar munching away on the leaves of one of those plants. In addition to the Monarchs I also saw several white (Cabbage?) Butterflies fluttering around the back yard today.

  Those Milkweeds that I mentioned in the last paragraph are, strangely, covered with bright yellow Aphids these days! I didn't realize that these poisonous plants ever become hosts to them.

  Bumblebees and Wasps of several species were active today especially around flowering plants. And, one final note, in spite of our lack of rain for the last couple of weeks in August, we still have a lot of Mosquitoes swarming around after sunset!

Sunday August 30, 2015 - Notes 1

  Tree Foliage Early Changes - Ash Tree
  Feather Run - Mainly Dried Up - Precipitation Lately
  Dragonfly - Common Whitetail Skimmer
  Dragonfly - Common (or Eastern) Pondhawk

  So I'm going to start by writing about tree foliage...

  During the last half of August, and especially the last full week, I've noticed obvious early signs that some trees in the area are already starting to change color with the season. While the vast majority of tall trees are still various shades of green, there are many with parts or all of their foliage taking on a yellowish tinge, and over the last full week of the month these trees, while very scattered, are starting to be obvious to pick out from the rest. On our property, the big Ash Tree in the front yard started to show yellowed leaves around the middle of August or just afterward, and it's really showing them now. This is a photo I snapped of it with my cell phone just late this morning:

  This tree seems to be the only one on the property we own that's showing any changes so far, though some of the other ones like the Roughleaf Dogwood and the Forsythia Bush in the front yard, along with the big Lilac Bush in the south side yard, might be showing some slight changes. The Ash is always the last tree here at home to get full foliage in the spring and the first tree to show autumn changes, but this year it seems especially early! In fact, when I looked at older photos I snapped with the cell phone last year, this is what the Ash Tree looked like around the middle of September in 2014. I wonder if all the extra-rainy weather we had from late spring through July, then the dry spell that we've had since, has somehow accelerated the process for this tree? I'll keep documenting it.

  I walked around our bank of Feather Run Creek just before noon today and snapped a few photos of it. The water in the creek is very low, and it has been for most of this month. The last measurable rain that I've recorded here at home was 0.01" during the early morning hours of Thursday the 20th, and the last time we had over a tenth of an inch of rain was almost two weeks ago on Monday the 17th, when I recorded 0.35" in my gauge. We've only had traces of it since then, including a few sprinkles yesterday.

  Here are two photos I took of Feather Run late this morning. One shows the view looking northwest from my back yard fence, and the other is a closeup showing the muddy creek bed with just shallow, slow-moving water moving through it. The bed is also sporting plant growth. Cattails near the creek are at the point where many of the brown flower heads have started to erupt into seed.

  There's a lot of insect and bird life that I'd like to mention today, but I'm going to concentrate first of Dragonflies. Just like last weekend, there are a lot of them darting and hovering over that shallow water in the creek, chasing each other around. They're of a species that I've seen around our property in the past, and I think they must breed in shallow, slow moving creek water. I did some research online today after getting some of the best looks that I could, and I'm certain that I'm seeing the Common Whitetail Skimmer (Libellula lydia). Interestingly, I'm also seeing males, not females (though females might be around). The dragonflies that I've noticed have whitish or pale-blue abdomens and wings that have a big black bar or spot in the middle. But these dragonflies show sexual dimorphism; females have different colored wings and bodies. Here are a couple of photos that I was able to get from the Internet:

Male Common Whitetail Skimmer (from azdragonfly.org)

(Older male; younger males have an abdomen pattern like the females but have this type of wing pattern.)

Female Common Whitetail Skimmer (from bugguide.net)

  There was another kind of Dragonfly that I saw today that had a bright green body with dark bands on the abdomen, and clear wings. I was able to get a photo of it after it landed near the creek bank on an old Cattail stem, but the photo wasn't great. Again, some research on the Internet has made me pretty confident that what I saw was a Common (or Eastern) Pondhawk (Erythemis simplicicollis). This time, the one I saw was a female, or possibly a younger male. Older males of this species tend to have blueish colored abdomens. I honestly never knew before today that different sexes of the same species of dragonfly have different coloring, at least in some cases! Again, here are some photos of this species I was able to get from the Internet:

Female Common (Eastern) Pondhawk (from dragonflysite.com)

Male Common (Eastern) Pondhawk (from dragonflysite.com)

(Younger males have an abdomen coloration similar to that of the female.)

  According to the information that I have, Common Whitetail Skimmer females lay eggs in water by landing near it and dipping their abdomen into water several times, while the Common Pondhawk female drops its fertilized eggs into water (I'm not sure if this means that it dive-bombs.)

  There are over 5,500 species of Dragonflies and Damselflies known in North America and over 450 species are found throughout the United States and Canada, so I'll never get to know them all. But today's observations and research are a start!

AM Sunday, August 30, 2015 - Introduction and Predawn Notes

  Weather Notes - The Return of Heat and Humidity
  Night Insect Chorus
 
  After what had been a fairly dry, cooler-than-normal week, the last weekend of August turned warmer and more humid again. Saturday the 29th was partly to mostly cloudy and hazy, and the Indianapolis Southeast Side dodged scattered showers and a few thunderstorms from morning through nightfall. Only a Trace of rain fell here; barely enough to wet the pavement outside during afternoon and evening. The low on Saturday was 64°F and the he afternoon high was 82°F. The real difference from last week was that Dew Points reached the upper 60's°F range during that afternoon and hovered there past dark. Even at midnight we were still at 75°F with a Dew Point of 67°F.

  Now at 2:00 AM the sky is overcast, with clouds now thick enough to cover the Full Moon (actually about half a day past Full). Earlier on Saturday evening and even past midnight, there were thin clouds and cloud breaks letting the Moon show through. The air seems still. The Temperature is 73°F with the Dew Point still at 67°F, making the Humidity 81%. The summer insect chorus is at full swing, just as it's been on every mild night this month. I'm hearing constant Cricket chirps all blending together like a long, suspended note. Along with that are the whirring sounds, buzzes, and sharp clicks of other Long-Horned Grasshoppers. (What I'm not hearing in the back yard, as usual, are the "croaking" sounds of Katydids; I often hear these in more wooded and rural areas around us, so I think they're just not as attracted to my property for some reason.)

  Even with all of this summer-like weather and night life around, there have been a few signs of the change of seasons here and there, and this seemed like the perfect time to start this blog. Why did I start it at all? There are a lot of reasons, but here are the main ones:

•  The main reason I want to keep notes in blog form in the first place is because I'm at the point where it's easier to do this, in a lot of ways, than it is to keep handwritten notes. Not to mention it saves paper (unless I print these out) and the entries are saved "in the cloud" and hard to lose!
•   I was making too many notes in my amateur astronomy blog about other things like weather changes, bird sightings, and other animal sightings and plant changes in and around our property. I wanted to keep Feather Run Astronomy more strictly about astronomy! So I started this one to keep track of everything else! 
• In four weeks, on September 26, I'm planning to attend a workshop and become a volunteer water tester for Hoosier Riverwatch and the Sierra Club. I'm hoping that this blog will also help me keep track of where I go and what I find through this program as I get more involved.

  We'll see where it all goes from here. I'll keep adding entries when I can, and I'm hoping they'll be interesting ones!