Tuesday: 8 May 2007
Last night, and the night before, was coldish, 45 degF, but yesterday the air was dry and the temperature 75 degF. Why can’t all summer be like this?
I’m having to relearn photography under a canopy now, and fiddled with the ISO, upping it from 200 to 400 so as to get a shorter exposure time. I was surprised at how much more grainy the photographs were on blowup. Last year I had decided that small a change didn’t make that much difference. I don’t favor flash - it tends to either miss a macro shot or blow out the exposure on the object. More tweaking! At any rate, none of these photos deserves a large presence, so I’ll just use smaller thumbnails linked to larger pics if you want to click.
Quite a bit of arthropod wildlife around today, beginning with this ball of spines found under a log. I’m not finding any better resemblance than to a Great Leopard Moth larva (Hypercombe scribonia) but it lacks the distinctive red bands between the segments. It must still be overwintering, as it was quite sluggish and certainly not out chowing down. If not a Leopard, then presumably some sort of Tiger Moth larva.
(Under the next log were at least four slimy salamanders of varying sizes but they zipped out of sight into burrows before I could photograph them.)
Close by was some sort of Pearly-eye, a Nymphalidae. Maybe a Northern Pearly-eye, Enodia amphedon.
It seems to me that this can’t be any other than aSphex pensylvanica, a Great Black Wasp, but I’ve found no images that show the amazing white portion of the antennae that this one had. It was scurrying about the leaf litter deep under the canopy just above SBS Creek, and the antennae were in constant motion. With the white contrasting with the black it was something of a light show.
UPDATE: Bev at Burning Silo has suggested that this is an Ichneumon, one of the parasitic wasps, and indeed it appears to be so. See here. The white band in the middle of the antennae, plus the frenetic motions, give it away. As to what species? Even Bugguide throws its collective and competent hands up in bewilderment.
The highlight of the afternoon was Troll Rock and its environs. We last saw it on March 4, after the deluge (photos at bottom) but I’ve done a bit more documentation of it here. It’s quite a special place, with its enormous exposed rock blocking SBS Creek and diverting it over a little waterfall into a pond a couple of feet below. The margins on one side are swampy and filled with dozens of plant species, and there are even more on the slightly higher elevation that is just a little less moist.
And today it was filled with damselflies. I had already been dodging Ebony Jewelwings during the walk - they’re literally everywhere. And the other day I photographed a Red Damsel male, Amphiagrion saucium. I’m pretty tentative on most of the three species I saw today. Giff Beaton has a nice page on damsels, and Bugguide was a help too, but my photographs are not really good enough for me to make matches.
Today one of the three species was the Red Damsel female, or so I think (it could be an immature male):
Both the Red Damsel and the other two species are very small dragonflies - not more than an inch long, and fairly hard to track and see. I think the first two of the thumbnails may be of an Eastern Forktail (Ischnura verticalis) and the third of a Fragile Forktail (I. posita). I wrote on the latter last July.
On the bank above the top pool, I caught sight of a flier that quickly landed. It’s a tiny thing, less than 5mm in size, and although I figured it was a beetle, it didn’t resemble anything on Bugguide. I submitted it and Phillip quickly identified it as a Scooped Scarab, Onthophagus hecate. This is a scarab beetle that is also a dung beetle (though it may feed on fungi). The ecology portion on scarab beetles here gives a good summary of the flexible lifestyles (no pics, though).
Can’t get away without a couple of flies, surely. These were lurking atop adjacent to each other on the same plant. The first is quite small, less than 5mm, and the photo is not very good. I’m guess it’s one of the Longlegged Flies Family, Dolichopodidae but further I cannot go. Similarly for the possible Syrphid in the next panel. This one was somewhat larger, but still under a centimeter and not nearly as large as the American Hoverflies that act as constant companions in sunnier areas in the summer.
I’m having to relearn photography under a canopy now, and fiddled with the ISO, upping it from 200 to 400 so as to get a shorter exposure time. I was surprised at how much more grainy the photographs were on blowup. Last year I had decided that small a change didn’t make that much difference. I don’t favor flash - it tends to either miss a macro shot or blow out the exposure on the object. More tweaking! At any rate, none of these photos deserves a large presence, so I’ll just use smaller thumbnails linked to larger pics if you want to click.
Quite a bit of arthropod wildlife around today, beginning with this ball of spines found under a log. I’m not finding any better resemblance than to a Great Leopard Moth larva (Hypercombe scribonia) but it lacks the distinctive red bands between the segments. It must still be overwintering, as it was quite sluggish and certainly not out chowing down. If not a Leopard, then presumably some sort of Tiger Moth larva.
(Under the next log were at least four slimy salamanders of varying sizes but they zipped out of sight into burrows before I could photograph them.)
Close by was some sort of Pearly-eye, a Nymphalidae. Maybe a Northern Pearly-eye, Enodia amphedon.
It seems to me that this can’t be any other than a
UPDATE: Bev at Burning Silo has suggested that this is an Ichneumon, one of the parasitic wasps, and indeed it appears to be so. See here. The white band in the middle of the antennae, plus the frenetic motions, give it away. As to what species? Even Bugguide throws its collective and competent hands up in bewilderment.
The highlight of the afternoon was Troll Rock and its environs. We last saw it on March 4, after the deluge (photos at bottom) but I’ve done a bit more documentation of it here. It’s quite a special place, with its enormous exposed rock blocking SBS Creek and diverting it over a little waterfall into a pond a couple of feet below. The margins on one side are swampy and filled with dozens of plant species, and there are even more on the slightly higher elevation that is just a little less moist.
And today it was filled with damselflies. I had already been dodging Ebony Jewelwings during the walk - they’re literally everywhere. And the other day I photographed a Red Damsel male, Amphiagrion saucium. I’m pretty tentative on most of the three species I saw today. Giff Beaton has a nice page on damsels, and Bugguide was a help too, but my photographs are not really good enough for me to make matches.
Today one of the three species was the Red Damsel female, or so I think (it could be an immature male):
Both the Red Damsel and the other two species are very small dragonflies - not more than an inch long, and fairly hard to track and see. I think the first two of the thumbnails may be of an Eastern Forktail (Ischnura verticalis) and the third of a Fragile Forktail (I. posita). I wrote on the latter last July.
On the bank above the top pool, I caught sight of a flier that quickly landed. It’s a tiny thing, less than 5mm in size, and although I figured it was a beetle, it didn’t resemble anything on Bugguide. I submitted it and Phillip quickly identified it as a Scooped Scarab, Onthophagus hecate. This is a scarab beetle that is also a dung beetle (though it may feed on fungi). The ecology portion on scarab beetles here gives a good summary of the flexible lifestyles (no pics, though).
Can’t get away without a couple of flies, surely. These were lurking atop adjacent to each other on the same plant. The first is quite small, less than 5mm, and the photo is not very good. I’m guess it’s one of the Longlegged Flies Family, Dolichopodidae but further I cannot go. Similarly for the possible Syrphid in the next panel. This one was somewhat larger, but still under a centimeter and not nearly as large as the American Hoverflies that act as constant companions in sunnier areas in the summer.
