swells's Journal

I often stop by this little park to look for birds. Yesterday I visited to take some iNat observations.

I didn't seem many birds, but there were plenty of of bugs. Some of my iNat firsts included a tumbling flower beetle (Mordellidae), Pacific Forktail, and Common Whitetail.

August 2 update: Set up the Carol Ryrie Brink Nature Park as an iNat "Place". Now any observations inside the park will be automatically added to the list.

For several weeks now, a striped skunk has been visiting our yard. On Sunday, I finally got a piucture of him.

It's not very good picture since it was taken through a (not very clean) window, but still.

On Saturday, July 23, I visited Phillip's Farm, a Latah county park a few miles north of Moscow. It's a local hot spot for birds and there were plenty around on Saturday, but I was only able to get decent photos of a few.

My iNat total for the day was 51 observations from 25 species, including my first lichen ID (wolf lichen). There are still a bunch that I haven't identified yet, including a mystery dragonfly, hover fly, a grass skipper, and a possible Sylvan Hairstreak.

The iNat community was of great help in sorting out plants and flycatchers. Now I just need help with the insects!

Phillip's Farm is a great place to go iNatting, though the pond is pretty much choked out with duckweed.

The PCEI (Palouse Clearwater Environmental Institute) Nature Center is only about a half mile from my house. It has about 17 acres of natural space that includes wetlands and hiking trails. I often go there to watch birds and other wildlife.

So today my wife Carole and I created an iNaturalist "Place" for the PCEI Nature Center. Now anytime anyone enters observations within the boundaries of the Nature Center the observations will be recorded automatically.

We started it with 16 observations from 15 taxa -- the coolest one being a bee fly in the genus Systoechus.

My wife, Carole, attended the Idaho State Bar Annual Conference in Boise on July 13-15. I tagged along to keep her company and look for iNat critters.

I drove to Lucky Peak Reservoir on Thursday, and went on a hike at Foote Park. Among the 28 observations from 24 taxa was a Great Basin Rattlesnake, Western Fence Lizard, a Velvet Ant, Pacific Spiketail Dragonfly, a couple of Cooper's Hawks, and an Antlion (Brachynevurus).

Before leaving on Friday, I went for a walk along the Boise River and saw a Variegated Meadowlark and a Black and Yellow Mud Dauber.

I am participating in a phenology study at the Nez Perce National Historical Park in Spalding, Idaho. My role is to periodically visit individual plants of eight nationally tracked species to record their time and degree of leaf set, flowering, fruiting, etc.

While checking on my plants, I couldn't resist taking a few iNaturalist pictures - 67 observations from 43 taxa, with 19 life list firsts.

My favorite is the River Jewelwing, but there were lots of other cool species in various stages of identification.

Yesterday I created a iNat yard list, which is pretty easy to do. Here's how:

First create a "Place" by selecting "Places". Then click on "add a new place" and zoom in on the map until you find your yard. Click the cursor at one corner, then another, and continue until you've defined the polygon that corresponds to your yard. Give it a name and you've established your yard as a "place" in iNat.

To create a yard list, go to "Lists", select "New List", check "Make it a Life List", and type the name of the "place" that you gave your yard.

That's it. Now you have your own yard list that will be automatically populated with every observation that you make in your yard.

Now that I've got my camera working so that I can upload pictures to iNaturalist, I'll start adding birds. I'm going to start from scratch, rather than include previously taken pictures since the details of when and where might not be clear.

I stopped by the library today to return a few items - and wouldn't you know it - there were lots of cool things buzzing around the flowers bordering the sidewalk. So I had to go back to get my camera.

There were two species of bees, one was a bumble bee (genus Bombus) but the other I can only ID to family (Apidae).

I couldn't do much with the two flies, either. I'm hoping someone will help me ID them.

8 July 16 update:
The unknown bee on the pink flowers is a European Wool Carder Bee. (Anthidium manicatum), a mason bee (family Megachilidae) that was accidentally introduced to the United States in 1963. Since then it has spread from the east coast to California, where it was first observed in 2007. It is called a "wool carder" since the females shear off the hairs of woolly plants and then carry the "wool" back to their nest. The males are super aggressive, driving off any intruders to their flower patch. (Thanks villu.)

The unknown bumble bee has been identified as Bombus appositus, the white-shouldered bumble bee. It is native to western North America. (Thanks mdwarriner.)

Yesterday evening, while my wife was picking raspberries, I was looking for bugs and spiders. And I found a few, too. The first to catch my eye was a Yellow Douglas Fir Borer (Centrodera spurca). This guy was just hanging out on a raspberry leaf and didn't seem to mind a close-up photo.

My wife found some bugs (true bugs, that is) in her raspberry bowl. A green stink bug, that looks to me like it belongs in the genus Chlorochroa; and a small (~ 4 mm) brown bug, that the best I can do is say it is in the Hemiptera order. It may even be a Chlorochroa nymph for all I know.

But the coolest thing we found in the raspberry patch was a yellow crab spider. It's bright yellow color made poor camouflage on the red raspberry. I wanted to call it the Goldenrod Crab Spider (Misumena vatia ), but I couldn't see any red stripes on the outside of the abdomen. So I left it at family Thomisidae.

A bit earlier in the afternoon, I found a bald-faced hornet (Dolichovespula maculata) busily chewing up some wood on a carved walking stick. I suppose she was using the wood fiber to make a nest, which is probably in my backyard somewhere. I hope I don't find it the hard way.