The first batch of the latest sorting finds, with a second to come a little later on – I found several this time, but I had gone through just shy of two thousand frames, so not unexpected really. Right now we’ll do arthropods.
I don’t see these a lot, but they’re distinctive and easily recognizable. This is an Ailanthus webworm moth (Atteva aurea) on the flowers of some variety of milkweed (Asclepias.) Even BugGuide.net says that the markings on the wings are black and white, but this isn’t quite true; the dark portions are actually iridescent blue when seen in the right light, which I managed to capture here. All portions of the wings are iridescent, actually, though this is normally very hard to see, especially since the overall length of the moth is about 15mm.
The species has been featured here before, kinda – the species name has been changed in the 13 years since that post, because onward marching science and all that. I included this comparison photo to show how the colors usually look, and those markings always put me in mind of the flower decals that people were gradually no longer putting on their Vanagons as I was growing up, or the nonslip appliqués that those same people put in their bathtubs after they had kids. Seriously, they were, like, all over the place (man,) but manufacturers started moving away from slick porcelain for tubs and killed the industry overnight. The time passages in the second half of that sentence don’t align, do they?
Those were taken during a trip to the NC Botanical Gardens, which also produced these two.
Suspended over a thicket of tall flowering plants and thus out of reach of visitors, an orbweaver was engaged in a curious activity. First off, I believe this is a Hentz orbweaver (Neoscona crucifera,) but this is the only angle that I achieved so I can’t confirm. But like many orbweavers, these make their webs at dusk and dismantle them at dawn, more or less – this was way past dawn and the spider was far too visible to marauding birds, though nothing happened while I was there. She (very likely female) was trundling along one of the main support lines of her web, gathering up loose strands in a ball ahead of herself.
What I think happened, before I wandered along, was that she went along the outer edges of the web on the main supports, cutting loose all of the attaching points of the ‘wheel’ portion (why do they call it ‘orb’ weaving? It’s flat!) except for one side, and the retracting webbing just snapped against the remaining strand, seen here. Then she gathered up all the loose strands to eat them and recycle them for the next evening, though the main supports remained in place. In fact, we have those same kinds of supports alongside our front porch right now, even though the orbweaver that made them hasn’t been seen for over a week now.
And a non-arthropod one.
Spotted not too far offshore during one of the lake trips in late September, I initially took this to be an osprey feather (Pandion haliaetus,) but now I wonder if instead it wasn’t from a juvenile bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus.) The cupped shape and downy portion at the base make this a covert, one of the body feathers, and because of the white I thought osprey, but juvenile eagles sport mottled markings until age four, and this was a decently-sized feather for a covert. I should have waded out (or in I guess) and picked it up – I have yet to find any eagle feathers, though I keep looking.
I also could have used this for the month-end abstract for September, but I’d forgotten about it and was too deep in computer wrangling to make a lot of effort then, but here it is now, so you can pretend it’s the 30th if you like…