I was taking a walk at Fort Hill, looking for new birds, wildflowers and butterflies to photograph. This pretty Pearl Crescent landed on the trail right in front of me and then I saw a pair of them on a clover down the ways a bit.
Pearl Crescent butterflies are orange with black borders, scattered black markings and a wingspan of 1- 1 1/2 “. Their habitat is fields and meadows which is exactly what Fort Hill has to offer.
Pretty little butterflies, don’t you think? I had never seen this one before!
I saw this lonely Greater Scaup at Boat Meadow the other day. It was swimming and diving all alone. I had never seen one before so I clicked a few photographs to try to identify it.
And then when I was at Herring Cove in Provincetown I saw a flock of about 15-20 of them out in the water.
Greater Scaup about 18″ with the male having a gray back and sides of white with a dark green head. Females are a dark brown with a distinct white face.
I took a walk along the beach the other day at high tide and there were Horseshoe Crabs everywhere! I counted 55 in one little area. I contacted the expert at the Massachusetts Wildlife Sanctuary in Wellfleet to tell him what I had seen. He said that with the warmer weather now, the Horseshoe Crabs will be very active.
Did you know that Horseshoe crabs are an ancient group of arthropods whose bodies are encased in a hard, oval shell? They have a long, rigid tail and five pairs of legs that they use for crawling, swimming, and gathering food.