2023-07-13 08:48:00
Gamma owls throng in some places. Those are not birds, but butterflies. Night butterflies that is, night owls. However, Gamma owls can also be seen during the day. They are less active then, but if you come near them, they fly up and show themselves. They are brown with a white mark on each wing that resembles the Greek letter gamma.
Towards evening they become very active, especially following a warm day. Mint or other flowers that don’t close in the evening can really be teeming with gamma owls. They also make a teeming impression – restless as they are. As they rush from flower to flower, they often keep flapping their wings. They do that quickly. They also only stay on a flower for a short time and sometimes they don’t even take the rest, the time and the effort. Then, as they flutter by, they stick their tongues in a flower. Then they look a bit like hummingbird butterflies; they always sip nectar that way.
A gamma-ray owl sits – quite exceptional for this flutter – quietly on a leaf.Image Koos Dijksterhuis
From April to November you can encounter gamma-ray owls, but July and August are their peak months. One year I see a lot more than the other. I see them a lot this summer. That will have to do with the weather: a warm winter does the butterflies good and just as they pupated into butterflies, the drought was over, while it became very warm.
Gamma owls also crowd my window daily, or at night, when dusk falls and I light a lamp. They come to light as men came to Marilyn Monroe. For both categories of coming somewhere, it can lead to their downfall.
Possibly the largest concentration of gamma owls I’ve ever seen populated Domies Toen, the beautiful botanical garden in Pieterburen. They make use of the versatile nectar supply. There is also enough space for their eggs, because their caterpillars are not picky and eat a versatile flora from bedstraw to nettle.
Three times a week, biologist Koos Dijksterhuis writes regarding something that grows or blooms. Read his previous Nature Diaries here.
Nature diary
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