These long empty stretches keep happening, and probably will, since there are plenty of other things going on here that need my attention, so the posts get neglected. Plus, those same things keep me from finding new images or topics. So, we’ll have just a couple of sideline pics gathered here and there just to prove I’m not dead. But also consider, I could be resorting to AI to generate posts to keep on a better schedule (that’s AI, not Al, me,) but none of us want that, do we? Actually, has anyone but advertisers or cheapskate corporations asked for anything like that?
Continuing to our questionable and hardly exciting content.
While I was examining the almond tree for lizards, this dragonfly was insistent on hanging around, probably trying to get attention, and like a little bitch I complied. This is probably an eastern amberwing (Perithemis tenera) because of the uniformly tinted wings – most others close to this appearance only have a portion of the wings with color. More, I just liked the pose, as trite as it is.
While doing the evening rounds, I discovered that the Carolina mantis (Stagmomantis carolina) on the largest Japanese maple tree, one that I’d been spotting from time to time, had recently molted into its final instar, adult form, as evidenced by the wings (even though they look inadequate.) Carolina mantids are much smaller than their Chinese counterparts, so this one was a third the mass or less than the mantis featured in the previous post. It was also much more reluctant to walk on my hand for scale, so this was the only place that I got it to hold still enough. The dark spot on the wing is not a natural marking, but more likely evidence of an injury that occurred before the molt – it has a near-matching one directly opposite, only more noticeable.
This little lady has been guarding the living room window against encroaching insects for a couple of weeks now, and judging from the size, not doing as well as its relatives down along the pond, it must be admitted. This is, again, a golden silk orbweaver (Trichonephila clavipes,) catching the morning sun. What I like about this is the eye-bending nature of it, since the shadow is against the glass which sits between us and the spider with its the web. The web is bright enough to cut through the shadow, though, so it makes it appear as if the shadow is somehow behind it. I have seen these webs with very uniform spacing among the circling strands, some of them almost appearing like train tracks, but this one here isn’t evidence of meticulous care, is it? This is probably grounds for Weaving Under the Influence…
And finally,
The Japanese maple nearest Walkabout Studios routinely features four juvenile Carolina anoles (Anolis carolinensis) each night, though two nights ago when this was taken, it had bumped to five. These two aren’t doing anything nasty, they just happened to take up sleeping positions like this – normally they all find their own leaves with at least a moderate amount of personal space. Earlier that same day, I think, I’d witnessed one just a hair larger/older than these suddenly jump across to a butterfly bush and begin displaying its dewlap, flushing another unseen one from the area, so even this young, they can start getting territorial (and I’m really sorry I didn’t catch it on video, but I didn’t even have the camera in hand.) So does that mean these are opposite sexes, or perhaps siblings and thus not territorial? I can’t even speculate – I’ve said before, I just takes the picchers, someone else has to explain the behavior.
By the way, this particular night I didn’t take the time to get an anole count, even though it looked promising. However, the previous night I’d managed to bump it all the way up to 39! That’s quite a few bebby lizards – there’s got to be be some way to monetize them…