I just got back from a weekend trip to the Bay of the Somme. Lots of lifers (including black-necked grebes, Atlantic common seals, avocets, curlews, etc.), I had an absolute blast. It helps that I had basically never seen any shorebirds prior to this year (or if I did, it was when I was a very young child and thus don’t remember).
All things considered the crown goes to this juvenile ringed plover (I believe):
And not a lifer species but very unusual color variation I had not seen before, this very colorful Neotinea ustulata (normally the inside petals are white not pink):
Was it near a body of water? I’m no mold expert at all but that makes me think of apple snail eggs instead of slime molds. I still could be very wrong though, just a guess.
In this view, I can see the flowing plasmodial stage “dripping” from between the “curds.” My thinking is that the “curds” may be the beginnings of reproductive structures starting to form. I also wonder if what look like separate masses may be connected inside the stump.
I’ve seen this thing on a cruise ship before, but my phone died before I could get a picture, and I saw it in the woods last year, but it slipped away before I could I react in time. I suck at finding wood warblers and getting decent pictures of them, so this was an awesome find for me.
My favorite form this week has to be this (unconfirmed) sheeps sorell, I am always surprised when I see a species that is new to me in a habitat and group of organisms that I have spent a lot, such as a new to me weedy plant in a lawn or a new to me species of tree.
So, I spent an hour looking carefully at juniper trees, shaking branches gently, and eyeing wildflowers near the junipers searching for a juniper hairstreak. But no luck. I gave up, wandered to a stream, spied some bees to take photos of, and then a juniper hairstreak lands in front of me.
Can I mention someone else’s observation, that I had a small part in identifying this week?
Ijimaia antillarum a rare, benthic Jellynose Fish caught by a fisherman near Pensacola, Florida. This is the first observation of the species on iNaturalist. What is even more incredible to me, this is the first observation posted to iNat by the observer, quinn1978.
I’ve nominated this as an Observation of the Day/Week and, yes, this is a shameless effort to promote that nomination. :)
Looks like the butterflies are starting to happen! Managed to snag a Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta) today. Yeah, yeah, they’re not the most uncommon butterfly but its the first I’ve had since I started iNatting.
Unfortunately the picture is 2 pixels and a dream because they flew off before I could get closer with my camera phone.
After I come back from a trip, I usually take a bit of a break. This week, I only made one observation, but it was of a taxon that had stumped me for a while. Here you see the overall form of the plant:
I knew it wasn’t the Lactuca canadensis that we also have around here, but it gave me a similar impression; in my field notes, it is described as “lettuce-like plants.”
Having checked other observations in Greenville, filtered for Cichoriae, I found nothing like it. The CV suggestion seemed improbable: “We’re pretty sure it’s in this genus: Hypochaeris.” I didn’t believe that, because I have known common cat’s-ear (Hypochaeris radicata) for decades, and this looks nothing like it. For one thing, the branching pattern is wrong, and for another, common cat’s-ear almost never has cauline leaves. (I was going to say never, but just today I found two that did.)
The CV was right. It is Hypochaeris chillensis, also known as Brazilian cat’s-ear. Mine is the first-for-Greenville observation of this plant that grows all over Greenville, to the point that I can hardly walk anywhere in town without seeing lots of it. How did other local observers miss it?
I’ve been thinking about the fate of this fish. Some people on iNat’s social media accounts are sad that it wasn’t released after being caught. I presume it was already too late for that when the photo was taken. But I also presume the person who caught this didn’t take it home to cook for dinner. So, after being left on the dock for people to marvel at for a while, it was probably just dumped back into the water.
So, if I had been there at the time and if I had immediately realized what this was (which I definitely did not), I’m imagining a conversation with the fisherman. “Can I buy this fish from you? Let me throw it in an ice chest and rush it to a marine biology lab, to be preserved for science!”