Yes, you.
Have you eaten your moths today?
Yes, you.
Have you eaten your moths today?
I just love planting earworms like that.
But it really has been a week since the outing that I am about to relate, and the delay is partially due to a lack of free time, and partially due to wanting to clear some older photos from the blog folder first, which I did – there are six posts between now and this one, a photo from this same outing that I put up a day later. I suppose I always could back-date this post to make it look like I wrote it the same day, but why would I do that? Anyone coming here regularly knows I never posted on that date, so who would I be fooling?
[That’s just a hint, to someone who needs it.]
It was not the most productive of outings, especially since (as I said in the previous post) I was aiming to find mantids either mating or placing egg cases, which did not come to pass. So it was a ‘target of opportunity’ kind of session, and still produced a few interesting images.
Early on, a little butterfly settled onto Buggato’s hat for a light snack, I’m going to assume of the sweat-produced salt thereon since butterflies will do this more often than you might think. This is the appropriately named American snout (Libytheana carinenta,) not at all showing the color of the wings when they’re exposed. It got startled away and still returned, so we’ll credit Mr Bugg with a sweatshake that brings all the butterflies to the yard [no, I’m better than that.] At least I got both of them to hold still long enough for a sharp portrait.
After a while, I spotted an eentsy frog on a leaf, about the smallest that I’ve seen in ‘adult’ form while still a juvenile – I get the impression that the tadpole tail disappeared not two days ago, even though you can’t tell that from my image here.
There is a hint of a white patch between the eye and the corner of the mouth, with a darkish band right behind it, which identifies this as a Copes grey treefrog (Hyla chrysoscelis,) sporting the camouflaging green backs that can occur at this age. As small as it was, it was quick to seek cover as I leaned in for a better shot, but we encountered one or two others the same day, same general size, so I managed to sneak in some fingertips for scale as Buggato snapped the photo.
By the way, I found the secret to getting Mr Bugg to forward me photos that he’s taken, which is to take some photos of him and hold them hostage until I receive the ‘ransom.’
On two occasions, we saw robber flies with prey. One allowed us to do some detailed portraits, because it was busy stuffing its yap.
There are 110 species of robber fly (genus Efferia) in North America, but the Nerax group is most common in the southeast, so it seems – that’s as close as I’m getting. Its prey looks to be a leaf-footed bug (subfamily Coreinae,) but yeah, good luck with distinguishing any other details, or even determining that I’m wrong.
Robber flies are fairly large and ominous-looking, but they’re surprisingly mellow and will occasionally land on someone if they’re holding still; they’re also pretty chill about close approaches if you go slow. They’re wicked predators of other insects, but don’t bother people at all. Not sure what preys on them – they don’t seem overly concerned about such things.
Another section of our hike showed a sudden population of argiopes.
Black-and-yellow argiopes (Argiope aurantia) most commonly go under the name ‘garden spider,’ but that’s hardly exclusive. They’re big, and do big orb webs typically at about waist to chest height because they get off on hearing people freak out. In this small region, we spotted several within easy visual sight, and then none at all a handful of meters away while the conditions were about identical – I’m taking this as evidence that the hatchlings are lazy and won’t go far if the pickings seem adequate. And they were: the immediate surroundings were brimming with katydids, which is likely what’s all trussed up in the web.
Buggato did a photo of me getting the above photo, by the way.
That’s the current macro rig in hand, and the spider is visible if you look closely. Not visible is the other nearby, almost in my armpit as I leaned over to get a perspective other than the underside of the spider. And yes, those are all the thorn vines of some kind of berry patch – there’s nothing too dangerous to prevent me from getting photos for the blog, I tells ya. I even got bitten by fire ants on this outing, which is not good news because they’re not normally in this area.
A little later on during the return leg, I was surveying a particular porcelain berry bush for more of the froglings when I glanced down right in front of me and found the only mantis of the entire outing (despite the fact that, in the late winter, we had found dozens of egg cases in the immediate area.)
This is a Carolina mantis (Stagmomantis carolina,) likely a male from the coloration and body shape, but certainly a reproducing adult. It was not one from any of the egg cases that we saw, because those were all of Chinese mantises instead. And it patiently posed for a few portraits before deciding that we were not going to leave it be.
They often have this ‘urban camouflage’ coloration, but also appear green-brown, and are not very big. But this is a good view of the wings, so we’re certainly in the stage of seeking a mate – just, not presently engaged, as it were.
Meanwhile, Buggato posed for a scale shot.
At that point, our time was about up and we were heading back to the car, but as always, keeping an eye open for any further photographic subjects. A spot of white on a leaf attracted my attention, and I bent close to examine it, confirming my suspicions that it was a cluster of eggs. Moreover, as I leaned in really close, I realized they were in the process of hatching, so back out came the macro rig.
It took uploading the images to BugGuide.net, but as always, I got my answer – more specific than I suspected I’d get, too. These are green stink bug nymphs (Chinavia hilaris,) though how the entomologists at BugGuide differentiated these, no one ever said. It was possibly due to my remarkably detailed extreme closeup, since I stabilized the leaf in question by entangling its supporting branch with another thorn vine, then had Buggato hold my flashlight for adequate focusing light as I went in with the reversed 28-105 lens, the homemade ‘super macro:‘
I can’t complain at all about the results, especially since these guys are less than 2mm in body length – a pair could probably share the head of a straight pin. As the final photo subject of the day, I considered it a win, and had I more time, I might have stuck around to try and get a sequence of other eggs hatching, but alas, someone had to be at work within the hour, so further fame and accomplishment had to be postponed for that. And then I get all this snark in return. There’s no justice.
Still working through the backlog of photos, but part of the reason for stalling on these was that I was trying to produce the next chapter in the story, even going so far as to make another examination tonight before I started working on this post, to no avail.
You see, I’m trying to document the entire life cycle of a praying mantis, birth to death and everything in between, but a few parts tend to be difficult to capture. Birth, molting, even the occasional capture of prey – got all that. But with the exception of two or three inadequate frames from years ago, the courtship, mating, and egg-laying have all escaped my attention. In some cases, it appears that I’ve missed it happening very conveniently close by, like the egg case that was on the big Japanese maple right outside the front door, that I not only missed all winter long (even as I placed a case obtained elsewhere in prime position on the other side of the same tree,) I didn’t find it until well after hatching season.
This tree, while dense, is as tall as my armpits and a little over two meters across, and frequently garners my attention – there’s no excuse for this.
It’s not like I’m not trying. I frequently do a round or two of the yard, checking out all of the favorite locations and all of the newly-discovered ones, trying to keep tabs on the various mantids to be found. Once they reach adulthood, they have wings and can pretty much go wherever they want, though I’m endeavoring to make this location ideal for them, by having lots of plants to attract their prey insects, and making sure they get plenty of water when I find them during hot spells – and they definitely seem to appreciate this bit.
This used to be accomplished by a misting bottle, until I picked up a garden sprayer and could cover a lot more territory. During the hot dry season (which pretty much means Carolina summer,) I frequently stir them out of hiding places when I hose the mist around, as they come up to the upper reaches of leaves to collect as much moisture as possible before it evaporates.
But gradually, the numbers dwindle until it seems I see none for days or even weeks. And yes, it’s possible that they leave because of all the attention, big looming softboxes and cameras getting shoved in their faces, but this doesn’t occur very often at all; it might seem like a lot, if you follow my posts, but it’s spread over many individuals, and I can observe the mantids as well as anyone else – they know how to make themselves scarce if they feel threatened. Most times they haven’t even left position when I finish my photo sessions and move on. I mean, anxious mantids don’t tend to stop and clean their feet.
This is one of the new, breeding adults, by the way, as indicated by the complete wings with that bright green band. This was a sudden reappearance on the tomato plants next to the Japanese maple that may have been its own hatching grounds, and I watched it for a few days, off and on, before it disappeared again. But while we’re here, we need a closer look at those details – why waste them if they were captured?
The dark eyes here denote that it was taken at night, when they’re typically more active, but this is very likely the same individual as a couple of pics above, the wet adult with the green-brown eyes – that’s just the day mode. The photos were only two days apart, back at the beginning of September, but I haven’t seen this one since.
Still, I keep trying, even doing an outing to the same spot in the late winter where literally dozens of egg cases had been found, hoping for the chance to spot one being laid/placed/produced/whatever by one of the thousands of mantises that should have been born that spring. The result? Not only no sign of such behavior, we saw one, count ’em, one mantis the entire four hours (and that one wasn’t even the same species as all the egg cases, but will be along shortly anyway.)
We’re closing on the end of the season now, so there’s not a lot of time remaining to catch this, at least for this year – I’ve been trying for over a decade, so it’s just one of those many background goals that I’ll take advantage of when the time is right. And if I ever figure out a magic formula to make them stick around and provide more chances for this, I’ll let you know.
While the last few photos have all been the larger Chinese mantises (Tenodera sinensis,) the same ones caught during hatching, I’ll close with a smaller, adult Carolina mantis (Stagmomantis carolina,) that appeared on The Girlfriend’s trumpet flower for a little while and provided several enigmatic poses during a short photo session; another is the opening image at top. Just not the action poses that I’m trying to add.
No, this is not going to be a regular topic, because c’mon, I’m a guy! Mostly it’s to dump a large number of images stacking up in the blog folder, but also to tip my hat at the Alliterative Al. These have accumulated over a few months now, and while I could save them for the grey winter months, I also want them gone before then, but I don’t want to just discard them. I know, it’s like inviting you over just to feed you leftovers…
Back in the spring, I found a delphinium variety at a local greenhouse with a great color palette, immediately buying the plant when I determined that it was a perennial (I’m not much for buying plants that will only last the spring or summer.) When it blossomed, the flowers were this remarkable color, but unfortunately it always bloomed at the top of inadequate, tiny stalks, and either the rain or just the wind catching the greater surface area of the flowers caused them to bend over and break within a day of opening. We’ll have to see if it becomes any hardier next year.
The Girlfriend purchased a pair of hosta plants a few years back, which did okay but didn’t thrive. They were down along the fenceline, and I had to transplant them into pots temporarily in order to remove a section of fence and get a large shed into the yard. There they remained for close to a year, since the shed would have blocked their original location and we never decided on a new spot, and despite having just enough soil to house the roots, they thrived this year, blooming for the first time, so I naturally did a few shots up close. I have to note that they were also a favorite hiding spot of the green treefrogs, who almost perfectly matched the colors (of the leaves, not of the flowers, duh.)
They’re in bigger pots with adequate soil now, by the way…
On an outing a few weeks back, I came across a pair of wildflowers that make occasional appearances in the region.
These plants go by a wide variety of common names, so I’m going to arbitrarily select orange jewelweed, but the scientific name is always the same and that’s Impatiens capensis – doesn’t trip off the tongue as easily, I know. They tend to grow with a single blossom peeking out from a vine climbing other plants, a bare spot of orange among expanses of green, so you’re not going to do any wide landscape shots featuring this species. Or the next, either.
This one also has a variety of common names, with Asiatic dayflower probably being the most distinct even though mouse ears is the most descriptive, though much harder to find in an internet search – Commelina communis pins it down better. They appear to be ever-so-slightly more prolific, in that you can occasionally find two or three in reasonable proximity, as seen here. Oh, you missed it? Yeah, that blue blur in the lower portion of the frame is another, much closer to the camera and well out of focus. By the way, the flower only lasts a day, so this is lucky timing, and one of the reasons you might not see many.
I have no idea what this is – it was just growing wild from a pot on the back deck that holds four o’clocks and morning glories, some kind of weed. The diameter is smaller than a pencil – I was just going in with the macro lens because I could.
When I got the seed packet, I was pretty certain it advertised a variety of morning glories, though we only got this one color – which I’m cool with, mind you. As Hurricane Laura passed as close as it was going to get to central NC, all we got was a bit of much-needed rain, and this is how I documented it. But let’s have a variation from earlier, that I played around with.
I’ve talked about channel clipping many times before, so this is simply one of the same blossoms in just the blue channel. Can’t have everything be vividly-colored, can we?
And finally, our latest, a pair of quick finds at Mason Farm Biological Reserve.
I have no idea what this is – some kind of tall weed growing haylike in one of the open fields, but the tiny splash of color at the top attracted my attention, though admittedly, I’m looking for bugs when I go in this close. I went a little fartsy with them anyway despite this glaring lack of real photo subjects.
And this assault on color sense occurred when I stopped to photograph the purple wildflower and discovered the sweat bee inside. I spent far too much time trying to identify both, but have found no matching images of the flower and don’t have enough details from the sweat bee – the best I’ll say is that it’s from the Subfamily Halictinae. Next time I’ll demand that it identify itself.
Okay, that cleared out a few. Now back to our regularly weird programming.
BREAKING VIEWS: All of that was prepared on Thursday, to post early Friday, when I noticed that The Girlfriend’s trumpet flower had opened and was at peak – this doesn’t last very long, so I made sure to get a photo as dusk was falling. Of course, it belongs here, so this is the absolute latest flower. Unless I see something later tonight (it’s still Thursday)…
I already used the title ‘Last night’ long ago, so this is a sequel I guess, and I needed an appropriate indicator of how good it will be. This was the most recognizable, appearing on everyone’s list…
There has been a female barn spider (Araneus cavaticus) maintaining a huge web right alongside the front porch for several days now, but she only occupies it at night, as they do, and has kept it above head height so we’re not interfering with it during the day. The other night, I noticed activity from a suitor, and yesterday during the day I thought I saw him tucked away near the upper anchors of the web. Now I know that most of the orb weavers seek shelter at the uppermost anchors, but I guess I’d assumed that the wandering males got their moves on in a single session, the proverbial ‘one-night strand,’ (I’m going to hell, we know that already,) and then moved on or, like, died in the attempt. Apparently not, or at least not every time.
We’ll be frank, and say that very few people ever see a barn spider and say, “Oh what a beautiful spider!” and this includes entomologists and those spiders that have gone into modeling. The most complimentary thing that can be said about them is, they look like a meatball that rolled under the fridge and was found a few years later, after the civilization that arose upon it went extinct. Nonetheless, booty is in the eye of the beholder, and our paramour here was hard at work trying to convince his chosen one to let him break one off. This, to our eyes, mostly consists of playing a complicated game of pattycake. But he was at a disadvantage, as you can tell if you look closely.
[You know I do that on purpose to make you stare at the creepy pics, which certainly keeps my readership numbers up.] Yes, he’s definitely missing a few limbs there, though there’s at least one hidden in back, visible in other photos. You might think this would make him less desirable, but a) she probably dismembered him herself, because spider courtship be that way; b) who knows what actual traits spiders really look for in mates – it could be insane persistence in the face of fragmentation; and c) do you really think barn spiders can afford to be the slightest bit picky? I mean, c’mon, they’ve looked like this for decades – they’re not breeding for beauty.
Another aspect of this photo is that the female (which is the larger one, not that I’m making any comment whatsoever about this fact,) is facing the camera directly, and you can see four of her eyes if you look close. Go on – you know you have to.
I had considered trying to video this whole process, but the combatants lovers were well over my head in an awkward position and seemed to be taking a long time just playing pattycake, so I decided getting out the tripod and video light was not worth the effort. Lucky you.
Moving on, but not in any way ‘ahead.’
Just outside the margins of the backyard pond, I found a thin glistening trail that was actually extending as I watched, and bent close thinking it was an earthworm. It was not, in fact sporting an anatomical trait I’d never seen before, and I ended up collecting it (circumspectly) for a detailed photo session.
Yes, The Girlfriend is a real person and not a figment of my imagination. Assholes.
That broad head certainly had me going, and it maintained this distinct shape the whole time; it was the key to identifying it. But before we get that far, I have to point out that this little specimen could stretch out well over 20cm, and was as sticky on the underside as any slug, if not more so, and without knowing what the hell I’d found (suspecting some kind of leech from being right outside the pond,) I made sure I wasn’t touching it. It brought along several strands of pine straw and a few dead leaves as I collected it into a film can, but I eventually convinced these to part company as I ‘posed’ the wormlike-thing on a cluster of leaves.
Of course, like most of my photo subjects, it showed no inclination to cooperate and stay on the leaves, so we have portions of my desk appearing. I was dumb enough (shocking I know) not to get the millimeter scale out before I started the session, so I was juggling and wrangling my subject as I tried to pose it with the scale and get the camera back in hand before it slithered off across my desk and made me buy a new one.
I made the effort to examine the head closely for any signs of sensory apparatus, a mouth, earlobes, and so on, but this was in vain because the species barely has a ‘head’ to speak of. This is a shovel-headed flatworm (Bipalium kewense,) a type of land planaria that is an invasive species in this country and feeds on slugs and earthworms. As such, gardeners tend not to like them, because earthworms are good for the soil but these guys aren’t. And they have toxic internal organs, somehow collecting tetradodoxins within, so nothing eats them either. Not more than once, anyway.
I wanted to see a mouth, so I got out the macro aquarium (again, later than I should’ve) and managed to get the flatworm to climb the glass long enough for a pic of the underside of the ‘head,’ though not long enough to get all the lint and grunge out of the image. I was aiming in entirely the wrong location, however, because their double-duty mouth/anus is located in the center of their underside. And if that’s not creepy enough, they cling to their prey, evert their pharynx, and bathe their meal in chemicals that make it dissolve on location, sucking up the results. Yeah, no, this research last night did not provoke any weird-ass dreams at all.
Now, to cap it all off, I still have this specimen in the film can, because I’m undecided yet on whether I will try for a photo of the mouth itself, or even feed it an earthworm to photograph (or video) this whole process in disgusting detail. It’s not too late, so feel free to send me words of encouragement and suggestions of angles and lighting and so on. Anyone can photograph bunnies, but someone has to get the fun stuff.
I have to note that, as I’m sorting through the images to decide what I’m going to feature, I see enough interesting photos not on this date that I think I’m going to have to revisit this practice again – perhaps not next year, but certainly at some later point. Maybe I simply won’t make it a weekly practice.
To start off today, we have an entry from 2006, when I was playing around with infra-red again. The image is okay at best, but it represents to me an attempt to salvage the day. The Girlfriend and I had driven a significant distance to see an airshow in Norfolk, Virginia, but between a late start, a missed turn, and absolutely horrendous traffic outside the air base, we eventually gave up entirely without even gaining entry; the most we witnessed were some F-15s doing low passes at high speed over the road we were gridlocked upon. So at one point on the return leg, I just parked the car along the freeway and did a few exposures. That’s my old car there, which I still miss, with The Girlfriend hidden in the passenger seat. You can see the streaks of some cars in the middle distance, due to the longer exposures needed for IR, and of course I tweaked contrast significantly to bring out the range better.
I also learned from that experience, and next time around, arrived very early, with a bit more success.
Next up comes from 2014, an outing at the NC Botanical Garden, as a Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) peers over a drying flower head. The species used to have the common name of ‘green anole,’ appropriately enough most of the time, but this one was easily the darkest phase I’ve ever seen, appearing nearly black. The color changes generally express mood, but I don’t know what mood this is portraying, and the behavior that I was seeing was typical. This one first appeared back in that year, but significantly after that date – I really can delay a lot when getting around to posting, and to be honest, I have worse examples sitting in the folder right now, waiting for me to get off my ass and write them up. However, I prepare these posts ahead of time, so it’s possible that at least some of them have already appeared because I managed to write another post that published before this one was scheduled. I could edit this to reflect that event, should it actually have come to pass, but this is more fun, plus I have some space alongside the image over there to keep filling. So, is there a post dated yesterday, or even today but appearing in the lineup ahead of this one? If so, then I managed to squeeze another out after I wrote all this. Aren’t these fascinating insights into editing?
Slightly out of order, we roll back to 2013, a tree in Colonial Park Cemetery in downtown Savannah, Georgia that I liked for its fartistic merit. I took a lot of photos that day, but like this one partially because of its strength, and partially because I don’t have to upload another image since I’ve featured this before.
And I went out of order for a reason, because in 2018, we were back in the Savannah area again.
Now, this isn’t the amazing coincidence that it undoubtedly seems, because we have taken several trips to the region at about this time, with the intention of being able to see sea turtles hatching – not that we have ever been successful. But since we have friends down there, it’s also an excuse (like we need one) to go visit them, though after getting chased out by hurricanes twice, we’ve largely discarded this practice. This is a reflection of the drastically different way The Girlfriend and I view trips. I can toss things in the car and leave with less than a few hours worth of consideration and preparation, taking things as they come even if it means having a hard time finding accommodations. The Girlfriend has to plan months in advance most times, ensuring that reservations are made and so on. Thus, her method gets hit hardest when weather events occur, while I’ll just switch days off and head out a week or two later. There’s good and bad in both approaches, but it also means that, on occasion, I’ll do a trip by myself, just to get out.
Anyway, this is Cockspur Island Lighthouse, on the inlet a little inside of Tybee Island (which has its own lighthouse, but they have different purposes.) I was timing shots to get very distant gulls in the photo, and then cropped this one to emphasize their participation in the composition. We’ve seen this before, too.
Anyway, let me see if I get to/have already gotten to another post…
If you have the faintest interest in doing arthropod photography, you could do a lot worse than getting yourself a butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii) or three. They’re readily available most anywhere, come in a variety of colors, and most importantly, have a very long blossoming season while attracting a significant breadth of insects, as well as hummingbirds on occasion. This year, I have three, soon to be joined by a fourth (if I ever get around to transplanting it from a neighbor’s house – yes, with their permission.) But by far, it’s been the Black Knight variety that’s been the most productive, and I haven’t even staked it out for a long period to really do the job right.
Several examples of the species above are found routinely on the blossoms now, tiny little crab spiders that I’ve never tried to pin down the exact identification of, but genus Thomisidae anyway. They’re seriously outclassed by a lot of the pollinators that arrive, but they’re finding enough to eat – for instance, they’re the perfect size to prey on mosquitoes, so they’re certainly not going to starve.
If you’re familiar with butterfly bushes, you know that they bloom in elongated clusters of several dozen to several hundred little blossoms, each only 4-6mm across, so you can guess the scale of the spider – from normal viewing distances, they simply look like chaff. The ambush bugs, while still quite small, are notably bigger, but the largest predators that I’ve found are the mantids.
Earlier in the year – this was taken in June – the juvenile Chinese mantises (Tenodera sinensis) would stake out the plants, usually sitting just beneath the clusters waiting to snag a meal or twelve, but as the mantises grew larger, less able to hide among the leaves, they abandoned the bushes and let others take over. Though while we’re here, check out the raindrop on the mantid’s back above.
Carolina mantises (Stagmomantis carolina) hatch later in the year and are much smaller than Chinese mantises, so they maintain a longer stalking season on the bushes. Aside from their size, a key identifier is the abdomen curving upwards, often quite sharply as seen above, other times not as much.
[Boy, let me tell you, it’s getting tedious putting in these photos. Each one has the subjects identified in common and scientific names, which hardly trip lightly off the keyboard, so each photo has practically a sentence for the embedded description, but this is very helpful to any image searches for such species.] This is a particularly vivid specimen, even when camouflaged this way, and might even have been the one that I later watched stalking a skipper. I really should have sat down and staked out the bushes for a while this summer – that’s why I got them, really – because now we’ve passed the season when the mantids would be using them, even the Carolina mantises now in reproducing adult phase and not hanging around on these particular plants.
But they weren’t the only ones that liked the bushes. Back in July, I spotted a lacewing egg and went in for a tight closeup, getting more that I imagined.
That’s the lacewing egg at the top, the white thing on top of the threadlike stalk – that’s how lacewings lay their eggs. But lower to the right, we have the molted exoskeleton of the leafhopper nymphs that were partaking of the plant’s sap, while to the left, the camouflage behavior of an unidentified ‘inchworm’ caterpillar, doing a great job of looking like a twig; neither of these were spotted until I examined the photos afterward.
And finally (so far, anyway) we have a brief visit from a sphinx moth.
I had the camera in hand for just one visit from a snowberry clearwing moth (Hemaris diffinis,) though I’ve seen at least one other visit, and in my experience the clearwings seem to prefer the butterfly bushes – there’s a shot from another location coming up later on. With their long proboscises (or proboscides) the clearwings make short order of the tiny amount of nectar that can collect in those blossoms, taking less than a second for each, so the hovering moths flit their way around the blossom clusters fairly quickly, and nailing focus is challenging – this post contains the best photos that I’ve taken of them to date. But their season isn’t over yet, so maybe we’ll see what happens a little later on in the month. In the meantime, this post features a previous incarnation at the old house almost exactly seven years ago, attracting far more attention than this years’ plants. I just take that as a challenge.
I’m wondering how many people actually remember that show…
Anyway, we’re counting down (no we’re not) the backlog of photos that I’ve got prepped in my blog folder, that I’m skipping around non-chronologically among in an effort to not have back-to-back posts of insects, and so on. Today, we’re doing a follow-up with the tadpoles… kinda. Because these photos were taken four days ago and the development has progressed much further in the interim, but back when I obtained them, some flamboyantly-dressed psychopath was threatening our fair city, and I had to take care of that first. I’m sure you read about it.
In the last post featuring our resident amphibians, I remarked that all of those that I saw were in the same stage of development, but such was not the case this time. I captured three, and they were all quite different.
One was noticeably less developed than previously, sporting a pair of limbs that were frankly embarrassing, so of course I’m going to show them off for all to see here (“all” being the three people who might actually be reading.) And despite my efforts to show scale, those limbs just about disappeared in the broader shot, so we’ll have to go in closer.
For all the motion that they displayed, these might as well have been tattooed onto the tail – only on rare occasions did they appear to flop freely away from the body, without any muscular control whatsoever. But I do like that they still possess their own collection of pigment spots, which are interesting in their own right. The tadpoles appear, in all normal circumstances, to be a uniform dark brown, though if you obtain the right viewing angle, the transparency of the belly skin can be apparent. Up close and under the light of the flash, the skin is revealed to be spotted randomly with patches of pigment that will shine gold at just the right light angles. This means something, but I’ll be dipped if I know what it is.
Then we have what I was expecting to find.
This one was demonstrating not just more defined limbs, but actual muscle control, occasionally giving little push kicks with those limbs to assist with the typical fish-like tail motion that propelled it through the water. Adding the the effect was some visible development of the webbing on those hind feet.
The substrate at the bottom of the tank, by the way, is typical beach sand, just to give you the impression of their diminutive size and my remarkable abilities at macro photography…
You’ll also notice that the leg is being held in a useful manner, tucked up as if it could support weight (not yet) rather than flapping around behind. Though even when settling to the bottom, the tadpole was resting its weight entirely on its rotund belly.
And then we have Mk III, the sport model.
Now featuring all four limbs in good development, this one was getting ready for its emergence. Not only were the limbs being held in typical supportive positions while resting (ever so briefly) on the bottom, the tadpole was now swimming in froglike fashion, almost as if it was attempting to jump through the water rather than swimming, with the tail now hanging limply and without effect. And curiously, even though I’m almost positive that they’re all from the same brood, the size difference was visible and the reverse of what I expected.
I do not know whether to credit this to feeding prowess and/or genetic predisposition, or (what I consider more likely) that the body reserves were now dedicated towards muscle development. I don’t presently have an aquarium large enough to hold developing tadpoles for several days, where I could observe a few individuals to get a more complete timeline of their progress, and by now (four days later, as I said,) these specimens are all drastically different. Like the mantids, I have no way of telling individuals apart – the tiny branding irons that I ordered never arrived.
In that previous post, I figured the tadpoles were too big to be treefrogs and speculated that they were green frogs instead (the adults would just fit within your palm,) but seeing how small the one is as the limbs are well-developed, I am likely wrong about that; these could be treefrogs, though I won’t guess whether these are greens or Copes greys.
And just to give you an idea of how well developed that last one was, I left the macro aquarium alone on my desk for a short while, considering that I might examine the moss that I’d also collected for evidence of tardigrades (a photo goal for a long time now,) and the four-legged specimen released himself of his own recognizance; I found him outside of the tank, sitting nearby on my desk and trying to hide within a face mask. Upon his somewhat-tricky recapture, he showed a loathing of the water, wanting nothing to do with it, and I had to ferry him back out to the pond in another container. Even when I deposited him into the pond with its good protective cover, he headed straight for the sides and climbed out, though he waited impatiently right at the edge for me to get my vast ugly bulk out of the way. I am sure that at this point, he (and numerous siblings) are traipsing their tiny little bodies about our lawn, just to make me tiptoe through the backyard for a while.
I have tons of photos to post, but little time and motivation at the moment, so a quick one from the most recent outing, as a dragonfly was backlit by the sun – I cropped tight to bright out those wing details.
More to come, just don’t embarrass us both by asking when…
So we’re gonna talk briefly about coincidences today, because they must mean something! Or not. Almost certainly not. But remember last week when I featured the golden tortoise beetle (Charidotella sexpunctata,) and said that it was only the second time I’d ever seen one? This is the first:
Taken on this date in 2013 – funny how I photographed them a week shy of four years apart.
Or likely not, because most arthropods have active seasons for certain behaviors, so it may be that there are only a few weeks out of the year (or even less) when I’m most likely to see this species as adults anyway. But that’s not half as dramatic, so we’ll go back to isn’t that weird!?
Another one, out of chronological order, for which I apologize not at all. Get over it.
This is from 2011, The Girlfriend’s favored rose bush which I inadvertently uprooted a few years later when I pulled away a section of fence that it had grown through. She liked it because of the lemony scent, and we spent no small amount of time trying to find another like it, with The Girlfriend’s Sprog eventually succeeding a few years ago.
Now we go to 2014:
Definitely in a rut here – I should start doing whiskers on kittens or some damn thing. This is not a lemony one, but another we’d purchased as a gift for someone who didn’t really deserve it, and now I’m slightly irritated. Still, I could do yet another wet rose pic today I suppose, if the weather cooperates, but I can’t get motivated over that as a yearly routine somehow.
Okay, that’s it for the coincidence bit. Moving on.
Definitely a fartsy kind of day, it seems – don’t know what that’s about. But I kind of like the framing of this one, just playing around with the egret who visited the nearby pond for a few days – it seems to be almost an annual thing, and never lasts very long.
And finally, an entry from last year, still being fartsy. I’ll stop soon, I promise – there’s nothing worse than someone pretending to have vision or style.
Wait! This is the same pond as the previous entry! What are the chances? Well, considering how many thousands of frames I’ve taken there, pretty damn good, is the official tally. I’m pretty sure this was from one of the many evenings I went over near sunset to see what the sky would bring, having no luck thereof, so I grabbed what I could. And you get to suffer for it. I wouldn’t stand for that, if I were you…