poanes hobomok
Monday, June 30, 2008 — 12:12 pm
Barrington, Illinois — Baker’s Lake
I walked through the wooded park on the bluff to take photos of the American White Pelicans that were hanging around. On my way back to the car, I spotted this black and orange skipper in a sunny patch along the trail.
The Illinois State Museum site says this:
The dogbane leaf beetle has a special type of color that shines and changes as the insect changes position or as we change position while looking at it. This changing color is called iridescence. The beetles' iridescence is produced by special body structures and light. The surface of the body parts of this beetle is made up of stacks of tiny, slanting plates, under which is a pigment (substance that produces color). Some light rays reflect from the surface of the plates, and other light rays reflect from the pigment underneath. At different angles, the light reflects at different speeds, causing interference that result in our seeing different colors that shine.
They're generally found on milkweed (as this one was) or on dogbane.
Monarchs are the best known of the milkweed butterflies, so called because their larvae (caterpillars) feed almost exclusively on milkweek plants (as this one is). The chemicals they take in from the plants make them taste awful, which makes most birds avoid them.
chrysemys scripta elegans
Thursday, June 26, 2008 — 7:20 pm
Cary, Illinois — Route 14
OK, this was weird. I wander around outside a lot, as you know, often in forest preserves and state parks and such. And when I wander, I keep my eyes open for wildlife of any sort. Long ago I studied up on Illinois turtles, so I know what to look for.
And then, within half an hour, I spot two species of turtles I’d never seen before while walking on a sidewalk along a busy highway. Go figure.
A lawn sloped down from the sidewalk to a pond (part of a fish farm) and a patch of woods. The Fox River was only a hundred or so yards away. A large (probably a foot long) turtle was … (what is it turtles do? stand? crouch? sit?) there. It’s neck was stretched out. I walked over, and it pulled back into its shell. It wasn’t quite as motionless as the Stinkpot, but almost. I tipped it over to get a look at the underside.
While Stinkpots have a noticeably unmarked shell, this slider’s shell was intricately marked with yellow and green. There was a bright red patch on either side of its neck (visible in the left-hand photo below), where the ears would be if turtles had ears. That’s how I know it was a Red-eared Slider.
McHenry County is at the extreme northern edge of its range. In fact, the Internet sites I found don’t record them in McHenry County, although they have been found just south and just west of here. And as it happens, Red-eared Sliders are the most common pet store turtles. (Remember 40 years ago when a lot of kids had those tiny turtles in those little green plastic ponds with little plastic palm trees? It’s illegal to sell them under four inches long now because they can carry salmonella.) They’re still raised in large numbers for foreign pet trade. So it’s possible this one was an escapee. But it’s also possible it wasn’t, so I decided to count it.
