night into day

Tuesday night there was a Screech Owl screeching away -- well, not really screeching but whinnying and trilling as Screech Owls are wont to do. In short, within a few days, we had both our breeding owls -- Screech and Great Horned -- calling and perhaps even beginning to go through the rituals of courtship. The sky was cloudy Tuesday night (no shooting stars) but last night was clear and the humidity was low permitting a skyful of stars to be seen along with the occasional sky streak of a meteor. No owls but an ear-splitting chorus of Katydids.

I didn't see any Purple Martins this morning although I thought I heard one calling distantly from way up in the sky. The Town Dock (Bay Avenue) colony has definitely shut down for the season.

The place was inundated by hairstreak butterflies -- all of them, apparently Red-banded Hairstreaks (Calycopis cecrops). The range of this skipper is basically southern but it has been expanding to the north and I have seen it regularly here in the past few years. It is a small butterfly but it perches quietly on (or near) the ground and it's easy to see through binoculars. It sits with its underwings showing a long, partly zig-zag, red band bordered in white, with thread-like tails (easily confused with the antennae), a red-bordered black eyespot in between and a blue spot below.This southern insect was supposed to be accidental on Long Island but it has obviously expanded its range to the point where it is common here; there were so many of them this morning that I wondered if this was a hatch or some kind of migration from the south.

Eric Salzman