It’s been a busy two weeks and I haven’t had time to do much for the bloggarino – a couple of the recent posts were actually scheduled days in advance. I should be more free now, but right at the moment, just two quick images from this morning, almost the same location but not the same time of day.
Heading out to breakfast this morning with The Girlfriend and
As usual, I had several egg cases of praying mantids to keep an eye on around the yard this spring: one Chinese mantis, two that I suspected were European mantis brought down from NY, and three Carolina mantis. One of the Carolina’s vanished over the winter, perhaps found by mice or something (this was before I’d mounted them on new stalks to keep them out of reach of
I had plans for a particular offering for this ‘last’ post in the topic, but it’s been taking longer than I have time for, and so we have this instead, though the original choice will appear later on – it’s in progress and one of those things that you shouldn’t rush.
So our opening image is from July 2012:
This is a Chinese mantis (Tendoera
We’re back to another installment of living out my glory years and realizing how unglorious they were, but you take what you got, because whatcha gonna do about it now? You should have thought about needing post material a decade later back then, shouldn’t you?
Though I admit, you have no idea how psyched I was to get this image back then, and I still find it pretty damn slick,
This image comes from 2011, when I happened upon the egg sac/ootheca of a Chinese mantis (Tenodera sinensis) sporting the newly-hatched young in a local park. The darkness of their eyes, I was later to determine, showed that they’d hatched out within the past several hours, and their proximity to the egg sac indicated that it was probably within the past 3 or so.
I had a few of these images waiting for an opportunity to write them up (while giving a little space from the last post about them,) and just now, I added some more. The raptors from the previous lake trip are still waiting in the wings – a ha ha ha.
We’ll start with the oldest, dating back to September 20.
This minuscule juvenile green treefrog (Dryophytes cinereus)
I’m still playing with the Chinese mantids (Tenodera sinensis,) and you’re tired of hearing about my attempts to obtain certain photos of them (aren’t you?,) specifically laying eggs, or producing the ootheca/egg sac – I’m honestly not sure these can be differentiated, because I only have one set of photos of it and they’re not that clear, plus I was
A few last photos for August, having obtained these just recently. My post and photo counts remain a little behind last year and/or average, but this is the way it’s been. Ya can’t change fate.
Glancing out the window, I spotted a butterfly species that I’d never seen before on one of the butterfly bushes (Buddleia davidii.) It flitted away as I watched,
They don’t even do that anymore, do they? Actually, we have a grandfather clock out in the living room that runs the old-fashioned way, weights and pendulum and ticking and all that, and it remains pretty close to atomic time after I spent two weeks adjusting the length of the pendulum rod. Okay, that’s not hard, but it has to be done in small increments and then observed for
July has been a slow posting month, for several reasons – the heat, mostly, and getting deeply involved in video editing. But I’ve also just – not felt like posting. Perhaps it’s good that I didn’t, because the mood might have come through and you wouldn’t have the scintillating content that you normally do.
But I’m getting over all that, so let’s see
