Field Notes Update

Giant Leopard Moth /  by Todd Henson

A giant leopard moth on my tree

In early June (2025) I noticed a white spot on the tree in my front yard. Looking closer I found a giant leopard moth resting on the bark, so I grabbed my camera and set about photographing it. I ended up coming back a little later after the sun had moved enough to put the moth into shadow, which helped avoid completely blowing out the white of the moth.

A side view of the giant leopard moth

I wouldn’t really consider the moth a giant, though it was a large one, being perhaps an inch long. After a little research I learned the females grow to about this length while the males can grow to about 2 inches in length. When they fly they have a wingspan of about 3 inches. They’re native to portions of North America.

Face to face with a giant leopard moth

It’s easy to see why they’re called leopard moths because of their spots, both black spots and white ones with a black ring, all set against a white body. It’s a beautiful moth.

Photographing the giant leopard moth from the shadowed side

The next morning the moth was gone, which reinforces what I’d learned about their nocturnal nature and how they avoid flying before nightfall. I never did see this one fly, but I enjoyed photographing it.

An angled view of the giant leopard moth

A couple weeks ago my father and I visited a farmers market in Standardsville, a small town a little west of here, where we saw a booth with photos of several types of moths, one of which was the giant leopard moth. The display was informing people of the problems associated with the very invasion spotted lanternfly and trying to help people learn to identify it. The giant leopard moth and several other species were shown as examples of good species, native to the area, but that are sometimes confused with the lanternfly. It was interesting timing seeing this display as I had so recently seen the leopard moth and was actively working on this post.

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Bullock’s Oriole Building a Nest at Barr Lake State Park, Colorado /  by Todd Henson

Here a Bullock’s oriole is just leaving its nest

Oriole’s are beautiful and somewhat iconic birds. In the Northern Virginia area I’ve often seen orchard orioles while out hiking through the right environment, and occasionally in some areas I’ll see a Baltimore oriole. But that’s it. The other oriole species of North America are all further west or southwest.

The first thing I noticed was an empty nest

So when I had the chance to visit Colorado in early June (many years back) I was very pleased to run into a Bullock’s oriole working on its nest right along a main trail in Barr Lake State Park. I saw the nest first. All the photos of the oriole are cropped in quite a bit to let you see the bird a bit closer. But the photograph of the empty nest is just as it was framed at 230mm with a 70-200mm lens and a 1.4x teleconverter. So the nest was very close to the trail. But when I noticed the bird trying to come back to the nest I moved further back to give it space. And that’s all it took.

An early view of the Bullock’s oriole perched in a tree near its nest

For whatever reason I struggled to identify this bird at the time. I wasn’t sure it completely fit any of the photos/descriptions in my field guides. It seemed a bit more yellow than orange which seemed to point towards a female or younger male (except for Audubon’s or Scott’s orioles, but it didn’t appear to be either of those). The blacks weren’t the stark blacks that photos of the males seemed to possess. The black goatee/chin seemed to indicate a possible male, though I read somewhere you might sometimes find a female with one and they’re thought to be older females. The narrowness of the goatee and the dark eye line pointed me towards the Bullock’s oriole, and a photo in National Geographic’s Complete Birds of North America shows a 1st spring male Bullock’s that appears to match my specimen, one that is just starting to develop the stronger black markings. And it could be complicated by the fact that Bullock’s and Baltimore orioles do sometimes interbreed (hybridize) in areas where their ranges overlap. Colorado seems more the Bullock’s range but the Baltimore’s range isn’t too very far east, so maybe? Probably not as that overlapping range is apparently a narrow one.

Another view of the Bullock’s oriole perched in a tree

The more I thought through all the field markers the more I kept leaning towards a Bullock’s oriole given the area where I found it, but I wasn’t willing to accept my own identification until years later when I ran two different bird identification apps against each of the photos and both apps identified them as a Bullock’s oriole (Icterus bullockii). And so I believe this bird to be a young, perhaps 1st spring, male Bullock’s oriole. But if you feel I’ve misidentified this bird then please leave a comment letting me know what you think it is and why, what identifiers or field marks you used to identify it.

The Bullock’s oriole has just landed at its nest and gives us a nice view of its black goatee

Interestingly, at one point in time the Bullock’s and Baltimore orioles were thought to be a single species and at the time were called northern orioles. But as happens, they were later differentiated based on DNA studies and other criteria. The name Bullock refers to William Bullock, an English amateur naturalist.

The Bullock’s oriole sticks its head in its nest

I was so fortunate, not only to find an oriole species we don’t have back east, but to find one working on its nest. I love finding birds in and around their nest. You can see such incredibly interesting behaviors, as visible in some of these photos.

I love this view of the Bullock’s oriole completely inside the nest with just head and tail showing

I hope you’ve enjoyed this look at a Bullock’s oriole working on its nest, as well as some of my struggles with identifying it. Have you ever seen this species of oriole, or any species of oriole? Let me know in the comments below.

Resources

Below are the three field guides I used most when identifying the Bullock’s oriole. Of them I found the National Geographic Complete Birds of North America the most helpful. It’s by far the largest book, not a guide you’d take out into the field, and that gave it the extra space to show some extra photos which made a big difference for me.

I am including affiliate links for the field guides and as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. This is at no extra cost to you and helps support me and this site. Thanks for your support.

The two apps I used and found very helpful were:

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Juvenile Yellow-crowned Night-Heron /  by Todd Henson

A juvenile yellow-crowned night heron

Some species of heron seem very common in the greater DC area, such as great blue and green herons. But night-herons rank among the species I rarely see. They tend to be a bit more secretive, perhaps more often out hunting at dusk and night, though as these photos show, they can also be seen by day.

Juvenile Yellow-crowned Night-heron

What we have here is a juvenile yellow-crowned night-heron. There are two species of night-heron in the area, black-browned and yellow-crowned, and if these were adults you’d more easily see why each is named as they are, though the yellow crown on an adult may be difficult to see. Adults are very distinctive and easy to identify. But the juveniles can look very similar. This one is more grey and has various markings on the feathers that help identify it as yellow-crowned.

In late July of 2008 we found several of these juvenile yellow-crowned night-herons walking the pathways around the pools at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens, in Washington DC, where they grow lotus and water lilies and where large crowds gather to see the blooms each summer. Night-herons may be more secretive, in general, but given these were juveniles and that they seem to have hatched in an area where many people gather, they were very bold and unafraid, seemingly ignoring the people and focusing on the water and any prey they could find.

Juvenile yellow-crowned night heron moving towards the water

Technical Note

A quick technical note to admit to my mistakes and to demonstrate that even when we make mistakes it’s often possible to salvage something of value from them (beyond the obvious learning opportunity). On a previous photo session I’d been photographing in a very dark area and had my camera’s ISO set very high (1000 was high at the time). I’d forgotten to set it back to normal when finished, and I’d forgotten to double check my settings before setting out this morning. So for much of the morning I kept wondering why I was able to achieve such high shutter speeds (1/8000 second). Well, it’s because my ISO was set way too high for a bright sunny day.

Lessons Learned

So, what lessons did I learn from this experience and from the mistakes I made?

  • Reset my camera settings to my typical values after each photo session. That way I have a known place to start from next time I pick up the camera.

  • Always double check my settings before my next photo session, just in case I’ve forgotten to reset them. This is when I can also change the settings to suit whatever environment I’m going into if I know to expect a certain level of light.

  • If something seems off in the field, such as unusually high shutter speeds, then stop and double check all my settings. I could have found my error and corrected it much sooner.

  • It’s often possible to salvage worthwhile material even after making what seems a stupid mistake. Granted, these photos will never be as technically good as they could have been. I have lost some data to noise. But thankfully it was a bright sunny day with few dark areas so the noise was surprisingly minimal and I was able to pass the photos through Lightroom’s noise reduction process to lessen the digital noise introduced by the high ISO. The photos work perfectly well for a blog post showing off a species.

Portrait view of a juvenile yellow-crowned night heron

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