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Duke Forest birds and butterflies today!



Folks,

I spent from 10 am til 1 pm in Duke Forest, I went in gate number 10
where Jeff's famous powerline is. Then afterward I went to Lake 
Crabtree
for an hour to see if I could find some dragonflies. Well I had a great
day at birding, butterflying and dragonflying! Ended up with photos of
Buckeye caterpillars, open winged shots of a very fresh Gray Hairstreak
and photos of a male 12 spotted Skimmer.

The birding in Duke Forest(Orange County) started out slow and about
noon it was all I could do with one pair of eyes to get the IDs I got,
as most of the time I was dealing with 6-8 birds in each flock moving
pretty quickly and a lot of the time in the upper forest canopy. I know
I had a lot of missed IDs.

Here`s the migrant birds I had:

1    Yellow-billed Cuckoo
15    Chimney Swifts
5    Wood Thrush (heard many)
2    Swainson`s Thrush
1    White-eyed Vireo
2    Yellow-throated Vireo
1    Blue-headed Vireo
2    Black & White Warbler
1    Tennessee Warbler
1    Northern Parula
6    Magnolia Warbler
2     Black-throated Blue Warbler
2     Blackburnian Warbler
1    Ovenbird
15   American Redstart
3    Scarlet Tanager

Lake Crabtree didn`t have any shorebirds (loose bird dog out there) but
did have at least 10 Common Yellowthroats foraging as I looked for
butterflies and dragonflies.

Butterflies Were very busy even in the cold at 10 am this morning.
Suprized to not see any Cloudless Sulphurs. Somehow managed finding 24
species. Here`s what I had first in Orange county and second in Wake
county.

1     1    Cabbage White
0     1    Little Yellow
4     0    Sleepy Orange
0     1    Gray Hairstreak
0     1    Red-banded Hairstreak
4     1    Eastern-tailed Blue
80   50  Pearl Crescent
3     0   Question Mark (my yard)
8     0   Common Buckeye (14 caterpillars)
4     0   Red-spotted Purple
5     0   Gemmed Satyr
3     1   Carolina Satyr
1     0   Common Wood Nymph
1     0   Monarch
2     0   Common Checkered Skipper
1     0   Swarthy Skipper
35   20  Clouded Skipper
0     1   Least Skipper
0     10  Fiery Skipper
2     0   Tawny-edged Skipper
1     0   Northern Broken Dash  (very worn)
2     0   Little Glassywing (very worn)
2     4   Sachem
4     2   Ocola Skipper

Dragonflies were 4 Common Green Darner, Anax junius (2 in both places),
5 Twelve-spotted Skimmer, Libellula pulchella (Lake Crabtree) and Black
Saddlebags, Tramea lacerata (Lake Crabtree).

Randy Emmitt
Rougemont, NC
www.rlephoto.com