All in Wildlife Watching
Summer is gone, and our friends the monarch butterflies are also gone. They have departed the eastern half of the United States on their annual southern migration, down to their wintering grounds in Mexico. As recently as September they could still be seen visiting the last of our summer flowers.
Just about everyone with a flower garden welcomes the arrival of those colorful visitors we call butterflies. They come to visit the brightly colored flowers, and we are glad to see them. Although there is a wide variety of beautiful butterflies native to the eastern United States, one of the most stunning and attractive species is the red-spotted purple.
Frogs are very common around most lakes, ponds, streams and marshy wetlands. But not all frogs are of the same species. There are bullfrogs, green frogs, wood frogs, leopard frogs and several others. One of the most common frogs in the eastern United States is the green frog.
Have you ever seen a bird known as the Scarlet Tanager? Male Scarlet Tanagers are very unique, with bright red bodies and jet black wings and tails. Females are a much more drab olive-yellow color with slightly darker olive wings and tails.
The bullhead is part of the catfish family. There are actually three main species of bullhead in the USA: black bullhead, brown bullhead and yellow bullhead. These whiskered fish are very common in lakes, ponds and rivers, and they are regularly caught by fishermen – especially while fishing at night.
One of the most common birds found along our lakeshores and wetland areas in the summertime is the red-winged blackbird. These familiar birds prefer to nest in wet and swampy areas filled with cattails, marsh grass and other wetland vegetation, and the male birds defend their nesting territory enthusiastically.
The tiny hummingbird is familiar to most people around here, and these small birds can often be seen visiting flowers in our gardens. But another daytime visitor to the flower garden goes unseen by most of us. It is the small but speedy hummingbird moth.
Almost everyone who has spent a little time outdoors has seen a common garter snake at one time or another. Garter snakes are the relatively small, black snakes with the yellow stripes that we see in our back yards, in our gardens, in our parks, along creek banks, and many other places.
Beavers are very recognizable creatures. After all, how many large, brown furry animals do you know that have a really flat, leathery tail? Beavers are actually part of the rodent family, but they are much larger than most rodents.
We found an independent coffee shop, got the java, and hit the road. That road was California Coastal Highway 1 (from here-on out known as Highway 1), one of the most famous drives in the country. Friends who had driven it told us not to take it south. We would learn why later this day.
Bunnies seem to be everywhere, especially in the spring and summer. Mother cottontail rabbits often start having babies in April and May, and they can have as many as four separate litters during the warm weather months.
Pumpkinseed sunfish are colorful little fish that are almost always willing to bite. That’s a good description for this feisty member of the sunfish family since these fish are quite colorful indeed. They are often a greenish-yellow color, fading to yellow-gold on the belly with orange speckles on their sides.
