It’s been almost a week without anything but my routine weekly post, and for that, I apologize – it’s been a bit busy here, and while I obtained some frames here and there, I never got around to doing anything with them. Today, however, is Prove That You’re Not Dead Day, so it seemed as good a time as any to get them up here. Or for someone to produce a post that sounds like it was written by me to throw the investigators off. You can place your votes below.
[Heh, “votes,” plural – like anyone reads this schtuff…]
We’ll start with an update, since the lead-in was featured in an earlier post.
It’s interesting that they call these magnolia green jumping spiders (Lyssomanes viridis,) because I’ve never seen a magnolia even remotely this color – those tend to be pretty deep green, but even the undersides of those leaves, while much paler, isn’t this shade of day-glo green. I’m not sure what plant I could effectively compare it to, really, but it likely grows in Chernobyl…
Anyway, she was standing guard outside of the bebby nursery peeking in behind her here, where the eggs have hatched now, and I tried to get some decent photos of the young-uns, hampered by the sheltering webbing.
This is on the underside of a trumpet flower (Brugmansia) leaf, and you’d have to look close to spot either the nursery or the mother thereon. I had to wait until nightfall for the breeze to stop blowing the leaf all over hell and back as I was trying to focus, and then the flash illuminated the dense webbing enclosing the babies and obscured a lot of the detail, so I boosted contrast on this frame to make things slightly clearer.These newborns do not top 2mm in body length, but I admit to not taking the calipers out there for a precise measurement.
Nearby, the headlamp caught an unidentified larva ‘inchworm’ dangling from a web strand – I couldn’t say it was motionless, but it wasn’t moving of its own volition.
There was no breeze at this time, but that didn’t mean that I wasn’t inadvertently creating my own when I leaned in close, nor that I could stop the inchworm from spinning on its single strand. They produce the webs from their mouths, instead of from spinnerets at the end of their abdomen like spiders, so they hang head-up instead of head-down. But you likely already spotted that odd little detail, so let’s go in for a closer look at it.
You know, not only have I found that merely getting the macro rig out will usually stir up a breeze where it had been dead calm before, but when attempting to photograph something that can turn, it will inevitably fail to rotate into view no matter which side I attempt to photograph it from. This took far longer than expected, but at least I got one frame where you could clearly see the eggs from some parasite attached to the larva’s body. This is a doomed inchworm, is what I’m saying.
There are still a handful of mantids to be found, if one looks closely.
While I had several oothecas (egg sacs) from central NY that I suspected might be European mantises, what I’ve found so far appear to be the Chinese mantises (Tenodera sinensis) that are common around here, so I’m labeling this as such, and if the kidnappers are challenging you to correctly identify a bug and you get it wrong because of me, let me know and I’ll send a free print to your family, because that’s the kind of guy that I am.
Anyway, this one was on the popular Japanese maple, and I wish I’d seen the background leaf right behind the head, but I was focusing by headlamp and didn’t realize it was there. It’s been hot as hell here with no rain for a month, so I occasionally get out the misting wand and give these guys a drink, which they appreciate.
The butterfly bushes (Buddleja davidii) have also been struggling with the heat – actually, every plant in the yard is – and I’ve been steadily draining the rain barrels to keep them watered. On examining one of them the other night, I noticed what appeared to be a white petal on the otherwise pale blue flowers. This merited a closer look.
See it up there? It’s a mere 2.5mm in overall length, so not exactly leaping out at anyone, but of course I went in closer.
Enough to make out the body shape, certainly – this is a jagged ambush bug (genus Phymata,) and a juvenile or nymph stage. As adults, they’ll get perhaps five times longer than this, and typically turn yellowish with brown markings. I switched over to the reversed 28-105 for the serious closeups, but the bug was getting wary and, even at night, I was fogging up the viewfinder, which is definitely a hindrance when the lens is locked at f16. I have a lot of frames to discard, is what I’m saying.
But there’s your menacing head-on shot, and if you were a gnat or moth, this would be a bad thing to see, since ambush bugs are pretty fierce for their size.
Now onto the frogs.
Spotted this one night by the headlamp as well, roughly half of adult size, so pale that I wasn’t sure what the species was – at least at first.
Still practically no markings visible, but if you look closely, there’s a paler spot edged with darker grey right underneath the eye, which is enough to confirm this is a Copes grey treefrog (Dryophytes chrysoscelis.) I haven’t been seeing these much at all anymore, which is funny because when we moved here ten years ago, they were the only frogs I’d find. While I don’t think the green treefrogs are somehow chasing them off, it might be that the eggs or tadpoles are favored differently somehow, some pH thing or whatever, and so the populations are changing. I know there are plenty of each at the neighborhood pond, so this might just be a temporary, local phenomenon.
On the front storm door, one night, one of the green treefrogs (Dryophytes cinereus) was trying to do some cutesy, Instagram bullshit.
It might have carried better if the frog hadn’t been so filthy, but don’t look at me – I didn’t set this up. Meanwhile, a word of advice: if you see someone doing it on any form of social media, this is precisely why you should never do it yourself. Be original, not a mindless fad-monger. I know, I’m being mean to the frogs again.
And of course, I have to close with this one:
This guy was perched on one of the decorative sweet potato vines we establish in the front planters every year, and from a portrait angle, it looks like it’s smiling benevolently. Chances are of course that it’s watching me carefully to see if I’m going to do something aggressive, though the treefrogs really aren’t spooky in any way – when uncovering the grill (a favorite daytime hideyhole) to cook something, I usually have to grab them to carry them to a safe location because they’re not easy to convince otherwise. I keep looking at both the frog’s and the lavender’s angles here and thinking I should level this frame, but it is level – they’re crooked.
Anyway, vote now to say if this was computer-generated, or my actual writing, or too much dreck to give a shit either way. We’ll back to tally up any votes that might accidentally have occurred!