Sunflower, Unfinished

For the past few days, I have had these gorgeous, green-and-yellow centered sunflowers on my desk at work. They were brought for me by a co-worker who grew them for our wedding, as several friends did... but they chose to bloom quite a bit late. So I got some now. And they are so lovely, I just wanted to draw one. But I didn't have a lot of time, so... but I actually kind of like the picture this way.

Once again caught camera-less, today I saw 7 monarchs all together in one bunch of false sunflowers. Quite striking and lovely. A migration? And speaking of monarchs, the fat caterpillar from the last post? Is gone, and I can't find a chrysalis to save my life. I really, really want to. But it's not to be...

Things that Make a Blah Day Better

Some days, I am the person that sees things. Other days, I feel as though I miss what'sright in front of my face. Today, it took kindergarteners to point out the special discoveries...

This saddlebags dragonfly just emerged, is still resting on his nymphal exoskeleton. There were three within a 2 foot radius, and who knows how many more around the pond... one got blown by today's extreme winds into the water, but I rescued it and I think it was OK.

This was the second, and larger, of two monarch caterpillars they found munching on milkweed. It was dripping with dew...

Times You Wish You Had a Camera

So this morning, I had one of those moments... I saw something so cool and spectacular, and of course, I was camera-less. We watched from just a few feet away as a full-grown praying mantis ate the head and innards of a cicada. It just sat there, holding the green-eyed prey in its holy arms, and chewed. The cicada was pretty dead, we think, but the mantis' motions caused its translucent wings to move as though it were still struggling to be free. Meanwhile, the mantis' head moved up and down like a wolf picking flesh off of bones... well, like a green, alien wolf, I guess. Or a person with a big old ear of corn, choosing where to dive in and take a bite. Actually, the whole thing happened upside down... so it was like a bat eating an ear of corn. But I think perhaps we've gone a little too simile crazy. The end.

It's That Time of Year...

This argiope caught and wrapped up a grasshopper. In the small picture to the left, you can see (to her right and slightly behind her) the male argiope -- tiny and unremarkably colored. That means that mating season is upon us for these spiders, though I don't even want to think about how that works.

In other mating news, boy... did I see some crazy dragonfly stuff today. It was an afternoon for big dragonflies... there were pondhawks and skimmers and darners and saddlebags all over. The female pondhawks were depositing eggs in the water, which was cool. But what I'd never seen before... this couple mating on the wing was being bombarded by another male, I guess trying to break them up. He just banged into the mating pair repeatedly, and they flew really high to get away, and he followed them... it was crazy. A dragonfly fight.

Sun and Sand

It was, today, beautiful -- sunny, breezy, warm-not-hot. Rough blazing star is now in full bloom, making the sandy prairie areas at the beach just lovely.

Here, resting in a sheltered area among them, is a viceroy. You can tell the difference between the two both by the smaller size -- which is subjective but was what actually gave it away on this one -- and by the pattern on the lower wings. The viceroy has a black line that runs consistently across the middle of them (faint but present in this specimen); the monarch does not. The viceroy is well known for being a mimic of the monarch, capitalizing on the fact that monarchs, from munch-munch-munching on milkweed, taste nasty to predators. It's commonly used as an example in learning about adaptations... but it turns out, the viceroy is pretty bad-tasting itself. Its larval host plant is the willow, which is filled with a delicious chemical called acetylsalicylic acid... also found in aspirin, which is about how it tastes. Delish!

And speaking on milkweed munchers... here's another. The milkweed tossock moth, as an adult, is kind of a plain and boring grayish moth. But as a caterpillar, it is fuzzy and at least somewhat colorful. These two here were the second and third I've seen this week.

Here, a downy false foxglove... well, I think it's downy, but I didn't take pictures of the stem and leaves, so I'm going on memory and what little you can see back there... provides a lovely burst of yellow in the forest. These plants are parasitic on the roots of oak trees. Crazy... it doesn't look like most parasitic plants I can think of!

It was very wavy today!

Ah-Choo!

I always thought sneezeweed was a rather unfortunate and disparaging name. After spending a little while with my nose near one... I kinda get it.

By The Seashore

Yes, we're going back in time. I could just predate the posts so they showed up earlier, as if I'd done them in a timely fashion, but them most of my few readers would probably never even see them! So... to set the scene... we're back in Maine, on the first day of the Month... We are exploring the rocky coast, the cold water's edge, just after low tide. Close your eyes, inhale. The salty water smells the same everywhere, but is so different from inland air. I could be back on the flat sandy beaches of Georgia, or looking for tidepools in Oregon on the edge of a whole different ocean...

Open your eyes and it looks, on a cursory glance, like Minnesota, with igneous rocks giving way to the endless cold expanse of Lake Superior. But put the two together -- the sights and the smells -- and it was a wholly unique place. And Minnesota? Has nothing at all remotely tide-pool like. I loved looking at all the unique critters that have managed to adapt to living half their lives completely submerged, and half their lives in what is essentially a puddle... with some very turbulent waves in between. What a crazy life! We didn't find any sea stars -- they are there and I really wanted to -- but we did see some other nifty life forms... mostly snails and "bugs" of sorts, and what I will call sea weed. Perhaps the coolest thing, not featured in any photos, were the lichens, especially adapted to both submersion in salt water and bring in air. Apparently a tricky feat.

The other cool thing about the shore was the waves as the tide came in. They would hit certain spots at certain times and be tunneled in and make these huge splashes. This sort of shows it, but it's not the peak of the splash. I have about 40 photos that I tried to click at just the right time, and about 30 of them don't show any water at all. None of them showed the highest splashes. This is the closest. Oh, well.

I just liked this picture of Chris looking at the tidepools.

The problem with waiting so long... we actually did look this duck up, but now I've forgotten what it is and I tried to look it up again and am totally unsure. Scoter?

I love sea ducks, though.

This fellow isn't really a sea shore critter, but we did find him by the sea shore, and I thought his colors were lovely, so I have included him.