Follow our adventures living in the woods and meeting wild ones. This year we’re alternating between poisonous plants and continuing to write about pollinators and their host plants.
Dear Wood Folk, We covered so many butterflies in Volume 3, but never got to moths, bees, wasps, ants, etc. Someday we’ll get back to pollinators. And the previous birding series is far from complete too. But I feel like something different, and I’ve wanted to cover my favourite poisonous or toxic plants for sometime. … [Read more…]
Dear Wood Folk, Lately, we’ve been covering a lot of overwintering butterflies, but this month’s sulphurs (colias spp.) are migrators. We have three species around Haliburton, Ontario, noted on iNaturalist. The clouded sulphur (c. philodice) is the species you are vastly more likely to see. It’s followed by the orange “alfalfa butterfly” (c. eurytheme) who … [Read more…]
Dear Wood Folk, I suppose northern viceroys get overlooked a lot due to their twin being perhaps the most popular butterfly in North America. At first glance they sure look like a petite monarch. Viceroy (limenitis archippus) is a poisonous butterfly mimicking another poisonous butterfly that mimics it. Or it goes something like that. They call … [Read more…]
Dear Wood Folk, Around Haliburton, Ontario we have 4 comma butterflies: the green comma (polygonia faunus), eastern comma (polygonia comma), gray comma (polygonia progne), and the question mark (polygonia interrogationis). They are all sorted into the genus polygonia. They stand out with their angular wing edges from lookalike crescents and fritillaries. But they are very … [Read more…]
Dear Wood Folk, A while back we covered the red admiral, who despite the shared moniker admiral, is quite different from the white AKA red-spotted purple admiral (limenitis arthemis) we’re featuring today. They aren’t even in the same family! Surprisingly, today’s featured “admiral” is more closely related to monarchs. The appearance of limenitis arthemis is … [Read more…]
Dear Wood Folk, The silvery checkerspot (chlosyne nycteis) looks a lot like a northern or pearl crescent, and sometimes it’s called a silvery crescent. These crescents are hard to tell apart, especially the females. You can see pictures of the silvery on iNat. It appears to be dotted with white spots, unlike the northern and pearl. … [Read more…]