invertebrates
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Serious Moonlight
As part of the Macaulay Honors College Bioblitz in Green-Wood this weekend, I got to go inside the cemetery after dark. Under a gravid Moon, Chimney Swifts scoured the air. A trio of ultraviolet moth stations were set up around the Crescent and Dell Waters. After sunset, two Common Nighthawks flew into view amidst the…
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Location (3)
Still at Shawangunk. There’s one of those perma-porta-potties, thick with Drain Flies, and an observation gazebo. Mud-daubers and paper wasps appreciate the dry, sheltered spot. Seemed like everywhere you looked up there were old or current Polistes nests. There are… a number species of paper wasps in the Polistes genus in the northeast; 11 by…
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Location (2)
The Shawangunk Grasslands NWR, that is. This Ulster Co. area is best known for its winter raptor scene, but the grasslands are at their peak in late summer. A distant Red-tail and a closer Cooper’s Hawk were the only raptors in sight. But the invertebrate situation was fine indeed. Yesterday, we had some grasshoppers on…
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Location (1)
Here’s a fine essay on paying attention, listening, noticing, watching, the natural world. A cicada sounds as I type this. Two mornings in a row the only sound around 5 a.m. has been a cricket outside. The boom of bombastic car stereos, the revving of little men’s big engines, and tear and crash of garbage…
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Viceroy vs. Monarch
Limenitis archippus. Danaus plexippus. Viceroy pictured first. The black band across the hindwings is the most obvious field-mark difference. In the Southwest, however, this band can be faint or even missing. The Viceroy is also smaller than the Monarch, which is one of our largest butterfly species. This Viceroy was seen, along with a couple…
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Emergence
On Saturday, your correspondent stumbled upon a cicada emerging from its larval husk. The folded forewing has sprung from the exoskeleton, but the hindwing remains inside. The left hindwing, on the other side, was free soon enough, but this right one would remain inside the tight confines of the husk for the entire time. From…
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The Mosaic
All this week I’ve been detailing little pieces of the great mosaic of life around here. That’s what this blog has been doing for years now, sure, but this week’s cicada / Cicada-killer wasp / Mockingbird sequence was vary connect-the-dots. Usually I see something and then say something, building up observation after observation, painting a…
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More Butterflies
Common Sootywing. A small black skipper, the only example seen on this day in Green-Wood, where all these butterflies but one were seen. Rather better pictures than our last encounter, when there was also only one to be seen. The way the fall of light accents the scaly edges of this particularly brightly-spotted individual is…
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Swallowtails
Mating Black Swallowtails. Papilio polyxenes. When I first saw this, I though it might be a hanging dead butterfly, all torn up from the vicissitudes. Always double-check the anomalies!Interestingly, this pair attracted another male, if not more than one over the ten to fifteen minutes I was there. (Black Swallowtails are all over.)The second male…
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Spiders
Of all the creepy-crawlies, spiders might be the hardest to photograph. They’re small and the slightest breeze moves their webs. Autofocus pretty much refuses to recognize them. Manual focus is tricky, too. This preposterous creature is in fact a Spined Micrathena. The spiny adomen may deter predators; the un-spider-like shape may do something similar. To…
Backyard and Beyond 