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Long-legged Fly
One of the genus Condylostylus long-legged flies. A little jewel. Same specimen: the light does wonderful things with the metallic sheen. There are more than 30 species in this genus north of Mexico; they usually feed on smaller insects and mites.
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Galls
A tell-tale growth. Turn the leaf over.The gall of it all! I am fascinated by these things. Galls are created by the plant in response to the agitation of a wasp, mite, or something even smaller. For instance, insects lay their eggs on or in the plant, the plant is stimulated to build up over…
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Solstice
I know the sun can rise as gloriously as it sets, but the windows here on the top of the Harbor Hill Moraine face north by northwest across Upper New York Bay, to Bayonne and the ridge of the Watchung beyond.
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More Adalia bipunctata
This spring, I’ve spotted Two-spotted Ladybugs all over the place in Brooklyn. Down the street. In nearby Green-Wood Cemetery. In Greenpoint. And most recently inside my apartment! The beetle was on the inside of a window. I captured it by maneuvering a stiff postcard under it — that is, getting it to walk onto…
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Diospyros virginiana
American Persimmon sex parts brought down during Saturday’s downpour. (I didn’t notice that bumblebee until looking over the photo.)These are the male flowers, rather fleshy bell-shaped things with recurved lobes. And a fruit that’ll never be.
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Odonata Days
Well, I’ve finally seen a damselfly this year. Yesterday, I saw exactly two at the Sylvan Water in Green-Wood. I didn’t have my camera with me, but I did find something to share with you. This is an exuvia, the shed husk of the underwater larval stage of damsel- and dragonflies. This one is a…
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Behold the Imago!
A flesh fly of the genus Sarcophagi. You don’t particularly want to see the larval (stage, part, being) of this insect, since as their name suggests they are carrion-eating maggots. On the other hand, you probably don’t want to see carrion slowly decomposing by bacteria and the weather alone; that would take much too long:…
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Meandering
Originally posted on Backyard and Beyond: To meander, wandering this way and that, like the ancient Greek river Maiandros, by way of the Latin Maeander. The word itself has meandered down to us. There was no guarantee it would ever arrive here after its strange journey. That river was in Phrygia, Anatolia, now Turkey. The…
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Nests
Green Heron, evidently abandoned. A rather loose collection, looking precarious, like a Mourning Dove’s, but larger and twiggier.Red-winged Blackbird. Lots of grassy-sedgy material in these whirling constructions.Fierce defenders of their breeding areas, RWBBs will go after anything that gets in their space, including much bigger birds like Red-tailed Hawks. As I approached this lake, one…
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Hackberry
A hackberry drupe. Can we call it a “hack”? It is surprisingly smooth at this stage of unripeness, and extremely difficult to photograph. This is through a 10x loupe. Other names for the tree include nettletree, sugarberry, and beaverwood, but why hackberry? One source says the Scottish “hagberry,” for a Eurasian bird cherry (Prunus padus),…
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