Hello there! So glad you could stop by for part two of our Virtual Hike at Charles Ilsley Park.

When we parted at the end of Hike #1, we were admiring a young explorer, the fledgling Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus) in a snag just where the Central Prairie meets the Eastern Prairie. I love its serious, intent stare below!

Now let’s head off around the Central Prairie to see who’s who on the west side of the park. Again, my thanks to Aaron Carroll for sharing his time and his wonderful photos from our/his trips to this beautiful prairie park! Here’s a map to follow the rest of our travels.

Feeding the Multitudes: The West Side of the Central Prairie

An Elusive Songster Finally Spotted!

As Aaron rounded the top of the Central Prairie one morning, passing the trail that leads to the Western Prairie, he spotted the bird we’d been hoping for. We’d heard its double-phrased song on our first trip together to the park, but it buried itself in leaves and shade. But at last, Aaron found the male out in the open and oh, so beautiful! It’s hard to imagine that the feathers of the Indigo Bunting (Passerina cyanea) have no pigment! According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website, microscopic structures in their feathers refract and reflect blue light. If you held one feather up to the light, it would appear a dull, brown-black hue. Ah, let’s be thankful for those special feathers and the sunlight!

A Bustling Restored Wetland Welcomes Birds, Butterflies and Cool Bugs!

See that lovely sunken ring in the distance? It’s surrounded by milkweed and thistle – two popular foraging plants for butterflies and other insects whose caterpillars, in turn, feed birds young and old. In other words, nature, with a little help from our stewardship crew, has created a feasting spot for wild creatures. Let me show you.

The Main Attraction: Milkweeds!

When you arrive near the edge of this special wetland spot, you hear a hum, because on a sunny morning, bees are busy at the Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca). If you turn up your volume enough on the 18 second video below, you’ll hear a loud buzzzz as one flies by and then the soft hum (beneath the bird song), while the bees work their way around the blossoms. And this is only one plant of probably hundreds!

And that wasn’t the only milkweed. Farther back and lower in the wetland, Swamp/Rose Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) bloomed in the moist soil.

And when I zoomed out a bit, look who I saw on a beautiful pink flower! A Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) ! Perhaps it was just sipping nectar but this is an ideal spot for a female to lay eggs. After all, the only leaves Monarch caterpillars can eat are milkweed leaves and her offspring can find plenty here.

And this Monarch wasn’t alone. I saw at least four in the immediate area and at least one was male. You can identify gender in Monarch butterflies because the male has a round bulge on a vein in both hind wings. The female doesn’t and her wing veins are thicker than those of the male. The male on the left is one I saw at Charles Ilsley Park in July. The one on the right for comparison is a female I saw at Draper Twin Lake Park in 2021. [Click on photos to enlarge.]

Milkweeds contain toxins called cardiac glycosides which are harmful if not lethal for most of the creatures that try to eat them. But over the aeons, Monarchs and some other insects developed an immunity to these toxins and also keep a small amount in their bodies which if eaten, can make an unwary predator seriously ill. Their black and orange wings feature warning (aposematic) colors that ward off predators by advertising their toxicity.

Aaron and I spotted a few red and black bugs and beetles in the area which feed on milkweed, some of which are also toxic themselves and use warning colors. Two of the three creatures below won’t hurt you, unless of course, you eat insects. The blister beetles are an exception; if you handle them, they’ll release their toxic chemical which can cause blisters on the skin. Remember, though, that some insects mimic the color of these toxic ones and are completely harmless. It’s a convenient way to pretend that you’re toxic and not get eaten!

Out Into the Western Prairie

As we headed west past the trail junction, two summer wildflowers caught our attention. Native Culver’s Root (Veronicastrum virginicum), an elegant, wild member of the Snapdragon and Plaintain family, provides nectar for many kinds of small, native bees, according to Heather Holmes’ fine book, Bees: An Identification and Native Plant Forage Guide. Common Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) likewise makes a fine feeding platform for many pollinators, including bees, wasps and beetles.

Nearby, a Clouded Sulphur (Colias philodice) paused for a moment in its typical frenetic flight and I got a quick shot. This small butterfly benefited greatly from the arrival of agriculture; its preferred host plants are clover and alfalfa.

On the right, a dark blotch on a stem turned out to be a slender Ctenucha Moth (Ctenucha virginica). Its oblong, translucent dark wings, metallic blue thorax and red-to-yellow head (varying shades) make it easy to identify. It flies in daylight and darkness. Its caterpillar will overwinter in cocoons and emerge next May.

On the left, near the the connector trail to the Wynstone subdivision west of the park, I noticed an interesting comparison. On the left of the fence on private property, the neighbor has chosen to simply leave the land as it is. On the right inside the park, the stewardship crew had begun restoring the land to by planting native prairie species. It was quite a contrast!

Aaron and I ventured a short way down the Connector Path which leads to the nearby Wynstone subdivision, but retreated from the clouds of mosquitoes emerging from nearby wetlands. This warm, wet summer made what is usually a lovely walk on a forested path into a battle zone beyond the strength of our insect repellent! But before we left, we briefly glimpsed a spot of yellow sunlight in the greenery – a Blue-winged Warbler (Vermivora cyanoptera). Aaron recognized its call, bee buzz. And luckily, he got a wonderful shot! This warbler can take up residence here in southeast Michigan, though it often breeds farther north. Aaron looked for signs of a nest or young a week or so later to no avail. So we’re so glad he got this photo!

While retreating, we also saw a modest, forest edge butterfly, the Little Wood Satyr (Megisto cymela). This butterfly doesn’t sip nectar, but chooses sap flows, fermenting fruit, even rotting fungi and dung! No accounting for preferences, I guess….

Some movement on a leaf we passed caught our attention as two Harvestmen/Daddy Longlegs (order Opiliones) maneuvered around two adjacent leaves. One seemed to be reaching out toward the other. I’m guessing they were mating, since Wikipedia says that after copulation, the male may stretch out one of his extra-long sensory legs (second from the front) to stroke the female’s sensory leg. It’s believed that the male is stimulating the female to mate a second time. That seems to be what is happening in this photo, but as I said, I’m just guessing.

Turning back toward the Western Prairie trail, I came across a fledgling Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia) teetering on the top wire of the fence. It appeared as though it hadn’t quite mastered the balance necessary for such a narrow perch. It was reminiscent of a toddler learning to walk. Hang in there, little one! It will get easier.

Retracing Our Steps Back to the Trailhead

The last leg of our virtual hike takes us back to the Central Prairie and out to the parking lot. But the surprises kept coming!

Aaron saw a brilliant Scarlet Tanager (Piranga olivacea) perched in a tree on the southwest section of the Central Prairie trail loop. One of my guidebooks indicated that the brown bird below the adult male in the photo was a juvenile Tanager – but when I checked with several other sources, I learned that it definitely was not the Tanager’s offspring! (Always good to double check references !)

From the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s website, allaboutbirds.org, l learned that Scarlet Tanagers frequently end up caring for the young of Brown-headed Cowbirds (Molothrus ater). “When a pair of tanagers notices a female cowbird approaching, they aggressively drive her away. If they don’t notice, the cowbird gets rid of a tanager egg and replaces it with one of her own. The tanagers apparently can’t tell the difference, either before or after the egg hatches…” When that happens, the tanagers raise the cowbird as their own.

Cowbirds never evolved to build nests because originally they followed buffalo herds out west and later moved with cattle when the birds came east. So to survive as a species, they have always laid their eggs in the nests of other birds. A strange, vaguely disconcerting fact, but it explains the brown bird in Aaron’s Scarlet Tanager photo; this adult Tanager unwittingly served as a foster parent to a young Brown-headed Cowbird.

Thanks to Aaron for finding and providing the second photo he took (below) which nailed the species of the youngster for me, Aaron and for Allen Chartier, a naturalist and bird bander who occasionally helps me with identifications. The size, beak and breast striping of the juvenile all seem to match a fledgling Cowbird. Glad my multiple sources and generous helpers got us to the right answer. Doesn’t that Tanager look just a wee bit harried, like many parents on any given day?

But that wasn’t all! Aaron also saw a fledgling Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis) looking just about as unsure of itself as the fledgling Song Sparrow that we saw earlier. The little bluebird may have emerged from the many monitored nest boxes at Charles Ilsley Park. Its juvenile field marks are its spotted breast and fewer blue feathers on its wings. So lovely to find so many fledglings!

Another juvenile bird greeted us as we rounded the corner, taking the rolling trail back to the parking lot. It was a Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus), but was it a female or a juvenile? Allen Chartier again had an answer. “Because of their very rough courtship and copulation, adult females are often quite bedraggled-looking in summer, including with broken and very worn tail feathers. So based on your bird’s fairly neat and fresh-looking tail, I would say it is a young one.” Yikes! Poor females, eh? Who knew? Thanks to Allen for a quick and informative answer.

One more winged treat awaited us. Near the end of the trail, a male Black Swallowtail butterfly (Papilio polyxenes) stopped briefly for a sip of nectar. The host plants for their caterpillars include members of the carrot family, non-native Queen Anne’s Lace, dill, fennel and parsley.

The Secret to Having a Great Nature Hike…At Least for Me

It’s funny how each hike I take has a different tempo. Sometimes, right at the beginning, I notice creatures or plants that intrigue me. But more often, hikes start out slowly. I’m just strolling along, enjoying being out in the open with green and wild things moving and breathing around me. Benedictine Brother David Stendl-rast describes it as “making us one with all who breathe the same air.”

Then as I move farther into nature, I begin to notice more detail and the pace quickens slightly. I begin to see the distant silhouettes of birds as they fly above me or move about in the canopy. I start to notice the bouncing call of a field sparrow or the begging insistence of a fledgling demanding to be fed. Wildflowers dance at the path edge and I begin to recognize and greet the ones I’ve come to know.

And somewhere along the way, the even smaller details begin to come into focus. I slow down again and begin to look closely. What’s that tiny white flutter at my feet? Oh, there’s a strange little green creature in the center of this flower! If I’m lucky, l see something extraordinary – like the love tap of a daddy longlegs or a lemon yellow warbler with a dash of black across its eyes.

If I’m alone, the quiet seeps into me and I relax deeply. If I’m with friends, I appreciate another set of eyes alerting me to what I might have missed and the sharing as we pass observations – and sometimes later, photographs! – back and forth.

I hope these virtual hikes work a little bit that way for you, as a reader. It’s a pleasure to have you along when the walk is over so the sharing can go on. Thanks for the companionship!