And Then The Sun Came Out

After a week of rainy cool days, the skies cleared, the sun came out, and the temperature bounced back up into the 70s.

For the last several weeks, I've had my eye on the Black Raspberries, watching the flowers get closer and closer. The flowering of the raspberries is a major phenological milestone; is this not the first day of summer? Timed almost to the minute with their bloom, the first skipper butterflies appear. So today, when I saw open flowers on the Black Raspberries I began to anticipate seeing a skipper. After passing by nearly all the usual patches of raspberry along my route, I'd stopped looking for the butterfly. Then I saw something fly that at first I thought was a moth. When I followed it to where it landed I was delighted to see that it was a Hobomok Skipper.

More surprising than the skipper was a spreadwing damselfly, the first of the year. I'm fairly certain this is a Southern Spreadwing just by the date. Very similar to the Northern Spreadwing, though in Minnesota this species only begins to emerge in July and usually in the northern half of the state. The other early spreadwings for Rice County are the Emerald Spreadwing and the Slender Spreadwing and they usually begin to emerge in June.

Another highlight of this hike was finding a tiny hover fly of a genus I'd not encountered before---Paragus. About the size of the super abundant Toxomerus species only solid black in color (Toxomerus is boldly yellow and black). The common name proposed by Skevington et. al. in their Nearctic Syrphidae Checklist for this genus is Grass Skimmer. And according to bugguide.net, these flies are difficult to identify to species, as dissection is often required.

Posted on May 23, 2017 04:16 AM by scottking