Today, we have a reminiscence of a reminiscence – or something like that. What you see here is “Silver Bridge” on the railroad spur that crosses Cayuga Lake, one of the Finger Lakes in central New York, which is where I grew up. Or passed my adolescence, anyway – we won’t discuss how little I’ve actually grown up. It’s known as Silver Bridge,
Category: Random
Just because, part 31
Another quickie, as threatened. Given that I found this itty-bitty treefrog sitting on the upper rim of the same rainbarrel that had produced a previous photo subject, I’m going to hazard a guess that it emerged from the same source, the rainbarrel itself,
Just because, part 30
I occasionally get the chance to snag a pic or two, but not a lot of time to write up anything at all about them, so I’ll present a couple of ‘Just because’ posts this week. In this case, it’s a cicada, of an unidentified species, that I found molting into final instar (reproducing adult phase) while attached to the tire of the car that I was working on.
Storytime 32
This week we have something commonly called a comb jelly, but more specifically called a ctenophore (silent ‘c,’) because it’s not a jellyfish and in fact pretty far removed from such – it’s in a phylum all its own. I found one by accident in Florida one time, because they’re so completely transparent that I didn’t even spot it when I was
Storytime 31
Okay, this isn’t my photo, and technically it’s not even a photo, but I came across it looking for a new topic and liked the story.
Some friends of mine have adopted children, two, both from China – and that’s a long story in itself that I’m not going into right now, but suffice to say, China has (or at least had) a surfeit of girls awaiting adoption, mostly
July has to leaf
Okay, that was terrible, even for me, but it was still better than, “July has to fly,” which was my original choice. We are talking, of course, about the end-of-the-month abstract, something that started as a mere coincidence several years back and I’ve been continuing out of, um, something or other. If you were a professional blogger you’d understand.
Ignoring all that, this
Storytime 29
Far too many things going on today for a long one, so this is brief. Today’s storytime post is all there, if you look closely. The faintly brownish trail of some arthropod larva that twists through the middle of the leaf, and by that I mean, between the top and bottom surfaces – and terminates at the larva itself. It has the appearance of being on top of the leaf because
Storytime 28
This week, we have a little curiosity: an eastern garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis sirtalis) providing a threat display of flattened head and inflated body, attempting to look big and dangerous. First off, very few snakes ever engage in such displays – everybody knows cobras, of course, but they have a much more distinctive shape when displaying
Storytime 26
I had prepped this one as a potential illustration for the last composition post, but decided to use it instead for storytime – not much of a lateral shift, I know, but this one bears a little explanation. Taken a few years back at the old place, within the towering pampas grass that we had there, I spotted a very large Chinese mantis (Tenodera sinensis) deep within,
Everybody gets the day off
I had planned to give a little more warning about this, but see previous post intro. So we sit here practically as it’s happening, and for that I do apologize, but better than telling you tomorrow that you missed it, you know? So I’ll go ahead an announce that today is the June Solstice, often known as the first day of summer in the northern hemisphere, because you may not have heard