Happy New Year!

The Creature of the Year award for 2017 goes to the Chincoteague wild ponies that were featured in the May Mother's Day blog. Congratulations to the ponies for outstanding cuteness! Click to enlarge. 

In the event that the ponies are unable to fulfill their duties, the runner up peacock fly from June 4's blog -- pictured here reacting to the announcement -- will step in. Happy New Year and good wishes to all for 2018.

Merry Christmas!

“I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world!” -- Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.

Another Backyard Bird

The tufted titmouse, Baeolophus bicolor, is a frequent visitor to my seed feeder, summer and winter. Males and females look alike, so this one could be either. The crested head and big dark eyes make it adorable, right? Click to enlarge.

Tufted titmice hoard seeds against the uncertainties of finding food in winter. They are "scatter hoarders" that tuck seeds away in numerous small caches, an approach that gives some insurance against catastrophic pilferage by raiders. They hide seeds under bark and in tree crotches and similar places. I see them taking seed after seed, one at a time, flying away and then flying back for more.

Birds that hoard seeds like tufted titmice are famous for having well developed spatial memories that allow them to remember hundred to thousands of hiding places. Smart!

I'm a scatter hoarder, too.

Little Woodpeckers

This female downy woodpecker, Picoides pubescens, seems to like my new suet feeder. She's about 6 inches long. Click to enlarge.

Before she flies to the feeder, she sits in a nearby tree for a few moments. I assume she is checking the area for dangers.

A male came by soon, too. You can tell the difference by the red patch on the back of his head. I often see a male female pair pecking in the trees together. Handsome couple!

Anti-squirrel Technology Fail

That cone is supposed to keep squirrels off the bird feeder? LoL! 
Click to enlarge.

Harvestman

The harvestman in this picture is about five inches long from the tip of one leg across the middle to the tip of another. Good thing it is not a spider, but just a harmless member of the order Opiliones, a group often mistaken for spiders. You might know the harvestman as a daddy long legs or a harvester or a variety of other common names. At the end of this long harvest themed Thanksgiving holiday weekend I remembered having heard that some people think the names harvestman and harvester originated from their abundance in agricultural areas at harvest time. This one seemed to be living up to that legend by posing on a leaf of a blueberry bush in a farmer's field. Click to enlarge.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Some New Jersey wild turkeys slipping quietly into the woods.

 Perhaps the World Ends Here by Joy Harjo, 1951

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat 
to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it 
has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the 
corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to 
be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around 
our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down 
selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the 
table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in 
the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents 
for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering 
and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are 
laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

Autumn Leaf Edition

"How beautifully leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days."
John Burroughs

Click on the photos to enlarge. 

Thread-waisted Wasp

The season for photographing insects on flowers is coming to a close. Here's one of this year's last  -- the lovely thread-waisted wasp, Ammophila procera, shiny black with silver streaks on the thorax and a wide orange band around the center. Halloweeny color scheme, right? Click to enlarge.

This adult is drinking nectar at flowers but these wasps start life on quite a different diet. After mating, the female digs a burrow in soft ground or sand and then captures a caterpillar or other insect and stings in into paralysis. She places it inside the burrow, lays an egg on it, seals up the burrow, and leaves. A meal of fresh caterpillar will be waiting right there when the larval wasp hatches.

Halloween Edition

Happy Halloween! Gotta love the decorations everywhere. Click to enlarge.

I am seeing lots of animals out there, mostly skeletal, like this bird.

And this bony parrot on the pirate's shoulder.

And lots of mammals, too. I think this is a wolf a-howling.

A rat.

A cat.

A dog.

I even see an occasional horse. The thing about Halloween mammal skeletons is they have ears. Bony ears. Go back and look. Ears make them easy to identify but would not be found on real skeletons. Google a few.

But this spider skeleton is the funniest I've seen because spiders, being invertebrates, don't have any bones inside at all, just rigid exoskeletons. Now that's scary!

And I wish all the humans a fun Halloween!

Green Bees

Metallic green bees are among my favorite insects. I saw these glittering in the autumn sun yesterday as they gathered food from goldenrod flowers. These little native solitary bees nest in the ground, sometimes near each other in aggregations but the females separately supply their brood cells with eggs and provisions of pollen to feed on. There are lots of green bees out there right now getting the last of the year's pollinating done. 
Click to enlarge.

Here's something Ray Bradbury said about bees in his novel, Dandelion Wine:  
"Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers."

Another Bubbling Fly

I saw this fly today while walking in a park in Moorestown, New Jersey. Click to enlarge and you will see that it is blowing a bubble. As I watched, it blew the bubble about twice as large as pictured above and then sucked it in and then blew it up again and sucked it in three times! Then it flew away. It's the third insect I've found bubbling.

 I wrote blogs previously about a fly and then a bee I saw bubbling. There are theories about why they do this but no agreement. Based on the number of times I've seen it in just a few years I'm beginning to think it must be common -- or else I'm just freakishly lucky.  You can go to my bubbling insect blogs by clicking on this sentence.

Happy Columbus Day!

A holiday is a good time for a day trip to the country. Seems like Autumn is coming slowly and subtly this year, yet cicadas are calling loudly and there's a constant hum of crickets in the woods. Reminds me of this from E. B. White in Charlotte's Web:

 

"The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last for ever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year – the days when summer is changing into autumn – the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change."

Carnivorous Plant Edition

I've been in the New Jersey pine barrens a few times recently, at Whitesbog in Browns Mills and at Brendan T. Byrne State Forest. While I was there I saw three kinds of delightful carnivorous plants: pitcher plants, sundews, and floating bladderworts. The picture above is of a group of pitcher plants. Click to enlarge.

The soil in the pine barrens is poor in nutrients. Up to the challenge, these plants supplement their diets, especially with nitrogen, by trapping insects. Those little pitchers contain water and digestive enzymes. When an insect enters a pitcher it is guided down and in by downward facing hairs on the interior surface which prevent its escape. It eventually falls in and its soft parts are dissolved and consumed.

This lovely but dangerous pitcher beckons with insect-attracting red lips. Pitcher plants and sundews grow in acidic conditions near water with lots of sun. You can find them by slowly walking along the shore of a pine barrens pond.

This sundew plant has sticky drops of liquid on its leaves that can trap an unwary insect and hold it while the leaf slowly curls around and then digests. If you search you can sometimes find empty empty insect victims still stuck to sundew leaves.

This is a floating bladderwort. The spoke-like arrangement of leaves at the water surface is inflated and floats the plant.

Underwater leaves have bladders that can trap tiny aquatic creatures using a trapdoor system activated by trigger hairs that respond to the touch of prey. Amazing, no? You will find these floating in still water.

Cranberries grow in the New Jersey pine barrens, and blueberries too; both are cultivated and can be found growing wild. It is worth a trip for the plants alone and the ecology is fascinating. In fact, a pine barrens special edition is coming soon.

Autumn has begun!

A mockingbird with persimmons. Click to enlarge.

I'd like to think that if Walt Whitman were here right now, he'd say: 

"Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling, 

 Give me juicy autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard."

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Insects at Work

This week I noticed a lot of insects working. The honeybee above, for instance, is checking for pollen or nectar in a touch-me-not blossom. Click on the photos to enlarge.I also saw a few insects doing less common jobs.

Like this sand wasp digging at the door of its nest. That blur behind the rear legs is sand flying into the air. Adults typically visit the occupied nest to drop off captured prey like flies for developing wasp larvae to eat.

I also saw this yellow jacket scraping fibers off this wooden post. Note how shaggy the wood looks? It seems like such a popular spot for this activity that the wasps have worn it ragged. This wasp flew away when I approached but it or another just like it returned for more. They use wood fibers for nest building and repair. So many interesting insect jobs being performed all around us!

Summer Azure

I was walking on the sandy shore of the Delaware River in South Jersey right across from Philadelphia when I noticed this little butterfly sitting on a shell. The butterfly is the summer azure, Celastrina neglecta. If you click to enlarge you can see its proboscis extended and lying on the shell so I think it is obtaining moisture and perhaps minerals. Butterflies in its family Lycaenidae are well known for a behavior called puddling; gathering in muddy places to drink and obtain minerals from the soil. 

I usually see summer azures on flowers like this, but I guess they sometimes just get an appetite for seafood.

Happy Labor Day!

Have a wonderful holiday. Maybe make like this Zebra at the Cape May County Zoo and put your hooves in the air like you just don't care? Click to enlarge.