Just a couple of pics for the time being – I’m in the middle of sorting and some sorting finds will be along when I finish, so right now, we have a couple of recent discoveries for giggles.
First off, last night the five bebby anoles that could be found on the Japanese maple nearest the door to Walkabout Studios could be captured in a single frame:
Can you find them all? You remember that they turn much paler when they sleep at night, right?
Another little discovery, mostly because I saw something too dissimilar from the rest, which was this dark grey ‘leaf’ dangling from one of the sicklepod (Senna obtusifolia) plants:
This is cropped a little wider to show scale, but you can still see the web strand anchoring it to the branch in the middle. The details seem to indicate that this is actually a chrysalis, supported by the view when we go in closer:
The segmented abdomen (attached to the stem,) the wings, and the antennae are all distinct enough, but that’s an awfully pointy head, isn’t it? This might have given me pause if I hadn’t seen a species that seemed to match, almost exactly five years ago:
This is, I’m almost certain, an American snout butterfly (Libytheana carinenta,) and both that snout and the wings seem like a pretty good match to me. I’m trying to monitor the chrysalis to see if I can capture it while emerging, but I can’t sit there all day long, much less for the several days that this might take to finally occur. So, you may see it, you may not – that’s all I can say.
No, that’s never “all I can say” – we both know better. Meanwhile, the sorting finds will be along soon enough.