The beautiful, tangled profusion of foxtails, sickleweed, grasses, morning glories and other wildflowers\u00a0\u00a0\u2013 all this strip along the edge of the field where I\u2019ve watched butterflies this past week \u2013 was mowed by the county yesterday afternoon. Though I understand that most neighbors appreciate the neater, cleaner look along the road, it\u2019s really a shame. No tangle of weeds \u2013 no butterflies.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, there still are butterflies around, but they\u2019re more widely scattered and harder to find. And any butterfly eggs laid on the sickleweed or other plants in this area now are gone. This was just one very small spot, in the big picture of butterfly survival, perhaps not significant. But at a time when so many butterflies \u2013 as well as moths, honeybees and many other insects \u2013 are disappearing so rapidly, it seems important to realize that every small loss like this matters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now there\u2019s just a very wide stretch of low, dry, rough brown vegetation that spreads from the edge of the field to the road \u2013 about 10 yards, I think. I walked across it this morning, stepping around fire ant mounds and watching for snakes, and stirred up a happy eruption of grasshoppers in some spots \u2013 little ones, medium size, and a few larger ones, some green, some brown \u2013 snapping as they hopped. And then I walked all along the edge of the field, from south to north.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Along this edge now, ragweed, goldenrod and pokeweed all grow taller than my head, with horseweed, dogfennel, camphor weed and other yellow-blooming weeds that I can\u2019t name, and very tall grasses. And behind them, huge, dense stands of privet, with some honeysuckle and blackberry vines, kudzu with its grape blossoms and big green leaves, and other, hairy and thorny vines, chinaberry trees \u2013 and beyond them, the young pine woodland that has grown up in the south end of the field. And right along the edge of the field, low-growing horse-nettle still spreads, with its spiky white flowers. In the field and in the power cut that runs through it, I saw four Gulf Fritillaries, several widely scattered Sleepy Orange and Cloudless Sulphurs, and one Variegated Fritillary. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The beautiful, tangled profusion of foxtails, sickleweed, grasses, morning glories and other wildflowers\u00a0\u00a0\u2013 all this strip along the edge of the field where I\u2019ve watched butterflies this past week \u2013 was mowed by the county yesterday afternoon. Though I understand that most neighbors appreciate the neater, cleaner look along the road, it\u2019s really a shame. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2251"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2253,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251\/revisions\/2253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}