Field Notes Update

There’s Gold on Them Thar Flies /  by Todd Henson

Hanging with a golden-backed snipe fly

I caught a flash of gold while walking down a trail through the forest. I know in times past these woods were mined for pyrite, also known as fool’s gold, but I hadn’t expected to find real gold here. And yet, looking down that’s exactly what it appeared I’d found. And then the little bit of gold began moving.

Though it might blend in well in this environment, the movement of gold caught my eye.

I’d stumbled across a golden-backed snipe fly (Chrysopilus thoracicus), one of the many, many species of true flies in the world. And what a beautiful fly it is, with that back covered in little gold hairs that sometimes give the look of gold leaf someone’s applied to the back of the fly. This particular fly wasn’t very bothered by my presence. It was spending its time wandering around on the ground, so I did the best I could to keep up with it, capturing some photographs along the way.

I followed this golden-backed snipe fly as it moved around on the wet ground.

According to the Mountain Lake Biological Station of the University of Virginia, there’s actually little known about their life cycle and habits. You’d think in today’s world that everything has already been discovered, studied and understood. But the more I learn the more I realize how much we, as a species, and I, as an individual, still don’t know about the world around us and all the life that inhabits it. I find that encouraging as there’s still plenty of opportunities to discover and learn, something I very much enjoy doing.

And speaking of learning, I want to thank Stephen Gingold for teaching me what species this was, which then prompted me to do a little research of my own to learn more.

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Behold the Blue-eyed Grass /  by Todd Henson

Blue-eyed grass. Isn’t that a beautiful pattern where the blue and yellow meet?

This spring I found many examples of what has become a favorite flower of mine, blue-eyed grass. I find it fascinating it’s called grass as it’s really a member of the iris family, which helps explain the lovely flowers it produces.

I enjoyed the juxtaposition of the bright blue-eyed grass flower against the darker brown of another plant.

I sometimes struggled to photograph these flowers. I love the pattern formed of the transition from yellow to blue inside the flower and so I often wanted to focus on that. I loved the shapes of the petals and so I wanted to highlight those. And as often happens, I was drawn to the anthers so I sometimes focused on those. With the lens I was using and the distances I was at and, of course, the breeze, I often had a very shallow depth of field so I needed to choose what I wanted in focus as I just couldn’t get it all. If the breeze hadn’t been there perhaps I could have done some focus-stacking, but not this time around. This did give the opportunity, though, to really focus in on those single elements. And I do very much enjoy a very shallow depth of field.

Here I tried to include both the flower and the green bud of blue-eyed grass, though the but is out of focus.

A different arrangement of flower and bud of blue-eyed grass.

I don’t know what specific species of blue-eyed grass I photographed, or even whether they are all of the same. There are several species here in Virginia and many more can be found all over the United States and Canada. Check out Linda Leinen’s Lingering Bits of Spring to see examples of dwarf blue-eyes grass and annual blue-eyes grass found in Texas. Head over to Stephen Gingold’s Friday Night Flower Night to see an example of eastern blue-eyed grass in Massachusetts. And visit Alexander Kunz’s Sisyrinchium bellum to see an example of western blue-eyed grass in California.

A closeup of the beautiful anthers of blue-eyed grass.

I created these photographs on May 25th of 2022, all in the same general location. In fact, this is the same location where I photographed pink lady’s slipper orchids. It can be a very productive location and I look forward to more opportunities in the future to photograph these amazing little flowers. I hope you’ve enjoyed some of these views of blue-eyed grass. Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Here I really liked how close the blue-eyed grass grew to the branch, almost as if it were a part of it.

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Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Caterpillar /  by Todd Henson

An eastern tiger swallowtail caterpillar

Butterflies and moths are some of the fantastic creatures that begin their lives in very different forms, that of caterpillars. I’m not yet very good at identifying caterpillars but some of them are very distinctive, which can help. In this case we have a green caterpillar with what appears to be a large bulbous head with large yellow and black “eyes” and a yellow stripe around its neck and some blue spots around its body. Of course, a lot of this is just decoration, likely to make it appear less appetizing to any nearby predators.

Look at those “eyes” on the eastern tiger swallowtail caterpillar

I was fortunate to find this beautiful eastern tiger swallowtail caterpillar

After a bit of online searching it appeared I’d found the caterpillar for an eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly, one of the common and very beautiful species we see here in Virginia. The butterflies can be largely yellow or largely black but I’ve no clue how to tell from the caterpillar which it would become. As luck would have it, the first butterfly I photographed this year was a yellow eastern tiger swallowtail, so here’s a view of it resting on some leaves of the forest floor. We saw the butterfly in early April and the caterpillar in late May

My first view of a butterfly in 2022 happened to be a yellow eastern tiger swallowtail

When I returned to the site of the caterpillar a couple weeks later it was gone. The entire leaf was gone. I had hoped to find the leaf curled up with the chrysalis inside. I’ve read they can stay in chrysalis form for approximately 1 to 3 weeks, so it is possible I was too late. It’s also possible something happened to it. Perhaps it became a meal or a person walking along the boardwalk took it. I’m hopeful it managed the transformation to a butterfly, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to view and photograph it.

This was my first encounter with an eastern tiger swallowtail caterpillar. Have you seen any of these before?

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