Taken at the porch light on 9/28.

Whoops, once a week somehow turned into 3+ months. But since I’m sitting around with nothing to do while the Red Sox play, it’s time to get going again on this.

So we have a funky looking bird. Based on the short tail, the streaking on the body, and the oversized head, we can guess that it’s probably a juvenal. The bird appears to have dark wings and looks to have a fairly thick bill. Those two features scream out Scarlet Tanager, which is exactly what it was. My ID was made easier by the bright red daddy coming over to shove food down this one’s throat. I thought I took a picture of that, but apparently not.

Scarlet Tanagers are fairly common spring to fall in Waltham. I find them regularly at Met State, the Paine Estate, and Prospect Hill and have found young ones like this guy at Met State and Prospect Hill. I’m sure they breed at Paine as well, although the one I saw chasing a cowbird this year apparently was just hanging out as a Red-eyed Vireo hopped over and fed the cowbird.

About time I got one up.

Taken 6/24/2007 at Met State.

This week we have a bird that’s clearly on the small side. It’s mostly gray but has a reddish patch on the wings and some streaking. With the streaking, sparrows are about the only things that come to mind. Of the larks and pipits and other possibilities, they’re all a little thinner, so a sparrow it is.

With the reddish patch and overall gray color, there aren’t many sparrows that are possible. In fact, the only one is Swamp Sparrow, which is what this bird is. In Waltham, Swamp Sparrows appear to breed at the marsh in Met State and possibly at a couple other marshes. They’re also fairly common migrants, especially in fields, but occasionally elsewhere. This was one of the elsewhere ones, as it was in the wooded section of Beaver Brook.

Taken 5/8 at Beaver Brook.

Answer

So we have some interesting looking insect. It’s got a very round body with some black on light brown, long legs, and wings with lots of black along the front. It’s on an oak leaf, so we can see that it’s fairly small but not a tiny insect.

Although there’s quite a few insects that look somewhat like this, I’m not about to go through them all. This is a Bee Fly in the family Bombyliidae. With about 800 species in North America, there’s a lot to filter through. Fortunately this one has a very distinct wing pattern. It’s the Greater Bee Fly (Bombylius major).

These happen to be extremely common in early spring around here. For more information, see bugguide.

I’ll remember to link to the answer this time.

And the answer is…

Finally something other than birds.

For #6, it’s a mostly black thing with a creamy yellow border. It appears to be flying. With triangular wings like that, it’s got to be some type of Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies). The obvious candidate is the Mourning Cloak (Nymphalis antiopa), which is exactly what it is.

Mourning Cloaks are quite common, especially in early spring where they are one of the first butterflies on the wing. In Massachusetts, I’ve noticed them mainly from the end of March to the beginning of May, late June and July, and again at the end of butterfly season in October. The early ones are overwintering adults, the middle ones are likely the newly emerged adults, and the late ones are the June brood looking for winter homes.

For #7, it’s some sort of flower. I’ll confess that I don’t know much about flowers and hadn’t even identified this when I posted it. Searching the web appears to come up with a Snowdrop (Galanthus sp).

Since I’m behind, here’s two for one. Both taken in the last couple years in late March/early April.

#6

#7

Yeah, I’ve been neglecting this.

Clearly a black bird. It has a thin, pointed bill, a dark eye, and is a smooth black without any glossy color. Of the blackbirds, Rusty (and the very unlikely Brewer’s) has a pale eye, Common Grackle is much bulkier, glossier, and with a bigger bill, and Brown-headed Cowbird would have a brown head and thicker bill. That leaves Red-winged Blackbird, which this is.

At the time, it was one of the first ones to arrive for the spring. Now they’re everywhere.