I haven’t been doing intensive arthropod searches in the last few days, but have run across a pair that were just begging to have their photos taken and blogged. I have only begun to identify these, but was struck by the very nice coloration of the first one and the pretty eyes and face of the second one.

This one was one of a number that were flying and hovering within a foot or two of the ground in the deep woods, only occasionally landing. At first I thought they were yellowjackets, as the hovering back and forth behavior very closely resembled that, and started looking about for a nest hole. Once I saw one alight I realized they weren’t yellowjackets at all.

Judging from the prominent, short ovipositor it’s probably some kind of Horntail. Horntails are members of a nontaxonomic group that includes wood wasps and sawflies, so it could be one of those instead. Within bugguide’s pages of horntail images I haven’t found anything that looks like this goldenboy (or girl). A very attractive insect, though, with its golden translucent eyes, but if it’s horntail it is probably destructive to trees. It uses that ovipositor to penetrate into tree bark and lay its eggs, and the larvae then feed on the soft tissues of the bark until they emerge. Not only will they go after living trees, but also wood siding on houses.

BTW - you get a lot of Harry Potter references when you search on “horntail”!


This one was scurrying about the tomato plants, so was difficult to get in good focus. It was dragging and posturing its abdomen in a very odd way, but otherwise it seemed healthy. Of course my immediate inclination is to label it a wasp, but I’ve been burned on wasp mimics that were actually flies before! Still, the eye shape and length of antennae are more hymenopteran than dipteran. And its behavior was predatory - it did appear to be searching the stems and leaf top and undersides. That would probably eliminate it as a sawfly or woodwasp. So at the moment I’m leaning toward some kind of sphecid wasp, although it doesn’t have much of a thread-waist. And I’m not seeing those red legs on a black body anywhere.


And a thumbnail to the rear view:

We’re back, apparently, though for how long I cannot be sure, but hopefully indefinitely, if that construction is parsible. Thanks for everyone who notified me and particularly for the thoughtfulness in including copy and pastes of the error messages that appeared.

The site went down sometime early Tuesday morning. I noticed it but had other things on my mind and assumed such a glitch would be corrected quickly. It was still down Tuesday night so I wrote a ticket in to our ISP. That didn’t have much effect so Glenn called Startlogic this afternoon and quickly resolved the problem.

No, we hadn’t exceeded our bandwidth or gone over our memory allotment - those remain at 300 gigabytes and 3 terabytes per month, respectively, and we’re using only 1% or less than that. We hadn’t used wirty dirds or anything like that. What seems to have happened is that there was a period in which we exceeded 50,000 queries (hits, I guess) in a one hour period, and that exceeded some kind of acceptable level.

Some ISPs will reset after an hour automatically; ours does not. So we had to call to have them reset it.

I really have no idea why we’d have received more than 50,000 hits in one hour. Denial of service attack? A gradual unrecognized increase in hits that I don’t normally notice, to the fatal level? I scanned over the statistics, and it’s not reflected in the absolute numbers, but then again the shutdown cut off perhaps, before it could add to them in any revealing way.

Whatever it is, the Startlogic representative suggested some fixes. Remove meta tags that might be bringing in irrelevant curiosity seekers. That’s easy enough, and Glenn did that quickly. He also mentioned RSS feed, and I’ll have to investigate that a bit, because I simply do not want to cut that. Why Startlogic doesn’t have an automatic reset I don’t know but they do have a bit of a hack that will multiply the tolerance three-fold, to 150,000 hits per hour, so I will implement that at some point and see what happens.

Of course, good scientists, as we all are, will only change one thing at a time, and so I’m going to let Glenn’s meta tag changes stand for awhile, to see if that serves. If it doesn’t then perhaps the site will go down again, but at least we know that a phone call will reset it quickly. At that point I’ll try the hack.

O, the occasional annoyances of having your own site.

A lot has transpired in the last week or so, faster than any of the four of us involved in communicating with the Board of the Lake previously mentioned. A quick summary of the story on that link: we live downstream of a dammed lake which has hoarded water during times of dry weather and cut off flow to the downstream watershed at whim. This time the cutoff has been imposed all summer. Goulding Creek has consequently dried up to an alarming extent, particularly in the stretches during the last mile or so of its course before it joins with another tributary to become Big Creek.

On Wednesday night Glenn and two other Goulding Creek residents attended a Lake Board meeting. Glenn and one of the other two were not really invited, so it was, and we should recognize, good of the Board to allow them to speak. The proposal, after presenting the situation from our point of view, was to conduct an experiment allowing water to exit the lake for a period of a week or three and make measurements downstream to determine what if any effect there was. Our numbers were chosen to provide a flow rate that would allow a 1-3 inch depth of water to flow down Goulding Creek, and would reduce the level of the Lake by no more than a foot during the time period, and less should there be rain in the interim. Release could then be terminated if necessary.

Two members of the board were supportive of this, two members didn’t say anything or ask questions, and two were not supportive. The prediction was that the Board would put it up to the Lake Community to vote and this turned out to be the case.

After this, events moved rapidly. The three of us more actively engaged predicted we would not be asked to present our side so we prepared a letter to be mailed by USPS to all residents. Although we moved rapidly, we heard toward the end of last week that the polling had already begun, and that a letter of one-sided research had been sent by a Board member to all residents to influence their vote in the proper direction. The letter basically pointed out that experts had suggested that a release would do no good. The points presented were all simplified and stripped of any qualification, so they all seemed dead certain assessments. Not surprisingly every point was unanimous in supporting the notion of not releasing water. In no way was there any suggestion of our proposal of a temporary, controlled release that we might evaluate to determine if the experts were right. The implication was that we were basically asking them to drain the lake, which was certainly not the case.

Most insultingly, we Goulding Creek residents were advised to “conserve stream water” and not “use water from the stream to water lawns, wash cars”, etc. The Lake residents will know a lot about using lake water for these activities, but even if we were to try to do this it would mean pumping or hauling water up 50 vertical feet from a source 1-3 inches deep. So the Lake residents can rest assured that we will be “conserving stream water”.

Fortunately for them, the Board did not include “flood control” as an example of their virtuous water management capabilities. Since they keep the Lake full to the brim to maintain esthetic appeal, any hard rain would never be managed by the Lake, but would spill over immediately. Indeed they would exacerbate that by *then* opening up the valves and releasing even more water downstream. We would have countered rather strongly had they attempted this point. Ideally the Lake should be kept down at least a foot, if it were to be effective in flood control. Our proposal would actually result in this more desirable level.

We tore up the now dated snail mail and set about writing a short email countering these points and emphasizing the proposal of a controlled experiment. We asked one former Lake Board member if he would transmit it through his email list. He assented to this but advised us very strongly not to do it - that the mere attempt to communicate our side would inflame the residents. We should, he said, take the high road. We should set an example.

We ultimately determined that however well-intended, this was yet another somewhat patronizing attempt to prevent us from offering our side. We decided that we had nothing to lose anyway, and so that individual did kindly transmit the email this morning. (It didn’t help his case that he couldn’t remember the name of Goulding Creek - “what is the name of that creek we all live upon?”) So this step is done. Whether it does any good is completely up in the air.

I’ve been photographing Goulding Creek for many years now, but not as much as ten years ago, when creek levels were generally much higher on a regular basis. However I do recall quite well what normal flow should look like. At this point the thumbnails demonstrate what it looks like now. We’re 0.8 miles downstream. The next mile of length becomes increasingly drier.

The first three thumbnails detail creek bottom that has been exposed now for months and should have been covered in any normal flow. The rocks in the first photograph would have been covered by normal flow. The second and third photographs show the extent of any current flow - generally along the sides of the creek in a 1-3 inch sluggish stream. Those sandy banks in photos 2 and 3 should be covered by water. Again, the situation downstream is much more extreme.

The fourth photograph shows the “fertile” or (as they’re also, and equally incorrectly, called by the Board) “vernal” pool that was one of the reasons trumpeted by the Board for not worrying overly about Goulding Creek conditions. Fish and other animals will congregate in these pools and will survive until water levels come back up. This pool, about as large and deep as the two or three along our frontage, is about 3 feet long, 1 foot across, and maybe four inches deep. It is muddy and there is little agitation to promote gas exchange other than that provided by the swimming of a school of tiny fish trapped there. And it is becoming increasingly smaller day by day.

This pretty baby is a Black and Yellow Argiope, Argiope aurantia, certainly a common enough large spider and one that has made several appearances on this blog.


This one has taken up stubborn residence in the past couple of weeks in a corner of the porch. Not only is it somewhat inconvenient - her chosen webspace attaches to the kitchen door and the recycling bin lid - but it’s not placed very well, strategically. Without backlighting, the dark corner does not attract much interest and so I’ve taken to tossing in a “tomato bug” now and then. That’s what she’s feeding on in the photo above.

I suppose my feeding her is not in keeping with the tenets of natural selection. Perhaps we’re aiding and abetting the transmission of a combination of genes that caused her to seek out what I would have thought as a poorly selected venue. But still, she’s quite the housekeeper, taking her web down and rebuilding it completely every day at dawn. Inconvenient though she may be, she’s quite welcome to stay there as long as she wants.

Speaking of the “tomato bug”, which actually looks more like a beetle and I’ve yet to identify it: these appeared on the tomatoes outside the kitchen a few weeks ago. I’ve not seen them on tomato plants before, but then I don’t usually plant tomatoes quite so late in the season, either.

Things have been a little rushed the last couple of days, but on Thursday night WVFD did our third training session with the good folks at Oconee County Volunteer Fire Department:


Oconee County is Oglethorpe’s sister county to the southwest, one of five counties that surround Athens-Clarke County. Over the years they’ve been extraordinarily good to our little VFD, passing on used (sometimes barely used) equipment and turnout gear back in the days not so long ago when we didn’t have anything.

You’ll notice the “Station 1” in the photo above. OCFD has *eight* stations throughout the county. Its overall fire chief is Bruce Thaxton, who has gone out of his way to welcome and involve us each time we’ve joined them. (Station 1, btw, is a really fine and well-appointed one.)

Thursday night was helicopter air lift and rescue. We weren’t sure exactly what to expect and arrived with our bags of PPE thinking it might be hands-on training. It wasn’t, but that’s ok. We had our hands on in the great chicken truck turnover last May.

Helicopters are so cool. It’s probably the odonata connection.


The demonstration was put on by Omniflight, which acquired Air Rescue 1 recently. It’s a company that provides mutual aid to emergency medical services and fire departments. They themselves have a number of stations located strategically all over the northern half of Georgia such that they can provide an arrival time for trauma cases within an hour, and usually in half that time. Within another hour or less a case will have been delivered to an appropriate trauma center. When it’s all said and done, in most cases the cost and time of rescue, transport, and delivery will be less to the patient than if he or she had been carried by more conventional ground transport. And it’s becoming much more common to use air transport. Air transport has become much more available, the definition of trauma is surprisingly broad now, and there are more and more trauma centers.

So you can probably tell that most of the training was in listening, and not so much in doing. The focus was in the background above, and then in safety procedures when working around a rescue helicopter. Unlike in the photos linked by the thumbnails below, the helicopter on the ground is almost always engaged with both rotors in motion.

Among the things we learned:

Fire fighters are going to bring their families to something like this. Lots of kids, wives (or husbands!), all excited and having a good time.

I mentioned that trauma is increasingly broadly defined: Heart attack. Stroke. Blood pressure or pulse above or below a certain point, regardless of injury. If something were to happen to me out here, I’d almost certainly be airlifted, probably from the cul de sac but possibly even from the septic field back of the house.

All they need are coordinates provided by GPS. Many cell phones now give GPS coordinates. Maybe it’s a good time to learn how to use yours - might as well put the evil things to good use .

The helicopter requires only 100 feet square in order to land, less in the daytime. This one landed in the parking lot next to the station, about 60 feet from the building.

Never move behind a line defined by the rear of the landing strut. Tail rotor and engine exhaust!

Always approach a helicopter from the front, never the sides and certainly never the rear.

The rotating blades are going to suck up any loose material. Including headgear and sheets on gurneys. That will put the helicopter out of commission and it will not leave.

Patients always go onto the stretcher feet toward the front.

These helicopters are sleek and small, yet there will be four people inside, including the patient.

Helicopters cannot see power lines from the ground. All they can see are the round tops of the power poles, and maybe a crossbar if there is one.

They won’t airlift anyone who weighs much over 300 pounds.

And the thumbnails. If you look at the first one, you’ll see black dots all over the image. That’s not a dirty camera lens, it’s flying debris. I guess that’s something else we learned.

Oh - and the takeoff after the demo was delayed. A storm had moved in, with some spectacular lightning, just before they were ready to leave. They powered down and the pilot went inside the building to check the internets to see what to expect in the next few minutes.

First, the weather. The peak temperatures out here exceeded the 107.0 degree high experienced August 11 by nearly half a degree - 107.4 degF. In town the trusted measurement was 104.4, so it won’t break the daily record of 106, which places the event in the category of being both satisfying and dissatisfying. Then a completely unpredicted thunderstorm occurred late evening, while I was at work, of course, unable to appreciate the rare event, bringing our August rainfall up to 0.20 inches, 1/20th normal.

Second, the issue of the dammed lake I described yesterday took on much more of a life than I had expected, driven by the actions of two Goulding Creek neighbors and of Glenn.

After some thought and conversation with Pat, who fronts Goulding Creek a mile downstream from us, I realized my conclusions that the dammed lake has little effect on the status of the water table was not quite correct. According to the memory of elderly neighbor Lee, who has lived on Goulding Creek all his life and has made it a major passion, there were springs driving Goulding Creek way before the dam was built and the lake covered them in the early 1970s. Thus the lake is probably nourished by the aquifer, as well as by inflow from Goulding Creek upstream (when it’s not dry). This means that the dam has for decades reduced the nourishment of Goulding Creek downstream and has actively, persistently imposed a reduction of the water table downstream. (This also helps to explain how the lake has remained full even though the inflow has dried up in the last few weeks.) Even without the alleged springs, I had to conclude that the minimization of outflow of the water from the lake over many years has exacerbated the emergency we’re now facing.

I also did some calculations (as had a third neighbor, and our results and recommendations converged almost exactly). These numbers will probably not be on the exam later.

The lake holds 160 million gallons of water and has a surface area of 74 acres and an average depth of 7.5 feet. I figured that for a downstream flow of water 3 inches deep and 10 feet wide moving at a mile an hour, a daily outflow from the dam of about 100,000 gallons a day would be required. This would lower the lake by 1.3 inches a day, disregarding any compensating input from other sources. My choice of this downstream flow was my own gut feeling of what it would take to keep the water table up, and keep the creek minimally nourished.

This changes the situation considerably, since it suggests an experiment that could not possibly harm the residents of the lake. And since the board of the lake association was having a meeting last night, Glenn, Pat, and Lee (none of us members of the association, of course), attended and discussed this with the board. Vague proposals were discussed but generally revolved around opening the outflow as soon as possible to create this volume of output and leave it that way for a week, then re-evaluate after observing the effects. Since we live about halfway down Goulding Creek, at 0.8 miles, and the other two neighbors live a mile farther downstream, we’re in an excellent position to make those observations.

Half the board was supportive, half was negative to one degree or another, but they were reasonably polite. They certainly must be credited with the courtesy of allowing the three outsiders to speak and argue. They left after the discussion, but before the board concluded its business so we don’t know what their conclusion was.

At any rate, the issue is not going to die. We need to come up with a specific proposal now and transmit them to the board members for consideration.

Third, there’s this terrible photo of a visitor from yesterday. I didn’t have my eyes in so had to use the automatic focus. I’ve kept the photo small so as to reduce the pain of having to view it:


With the yellow antennae, the long abdomen, the lack of the three long threadlike ovipositors, and the yellow highlights, this is probably a male Giant Ichneumon, Megarhyssa atrata. A female is shown in the linked bugguide page. My first encounter with one, if so, and a friendly wasp indeed. These are parasitic wasps, stingless, I think. With those long long ovipositors the female probes into crannies and burrows in tree bark and then deposits her eggs when she senses those of various bark beetles and bugs. Quite a nice adaptation and contribution to disease-causing tree pests.

July 27: Still some water in this portion - just around the bend downstream is where I shot a photo at the time showing where the stream bed completely dry for the remainder of its length.


August 20:


While this has been on my mind for some time (obviously!), yesterday with its 104 degF temperatures, today’s predicted 104 deg, the promise of no rain through next Tue (maybe a small chance on Friday), and a conversation with a neighbor brought it into sharper relief.

The neighbor lives about a mile downstream from us on Goulding Creek, and like us, he’s very fond of the creek. His stretch has now completely dried up, although there are still standing pools on our stretch, with very slight flows. We talked several times yesterday about the dammed private lake upstream of us, which had at least a month ago shut off its outflow to Goulding Creek to prevent losing its water. This seems so wrong on several levels that it’s hard to believe that in the end it doesn’t matter.

Now the dammed lake has no effect on our side tributary above that runs into Goulding Creek, but it certainly has an effect on Goulding Creek itself. The lake is both fed by and feeds that creek.

Glenn talked to the lake’s neighborhood association president yesterday to determine what had been, could, and should be done, and had a pleasant and constructive conversation. The upshot is that the president has been on the phone for several days to Dept Natural Resources, Fish and Wildlife, and other various agencies and experts in the matter of the situation. The state of streams all over our part of the southeast is that they are all at historically record lows. The general rule of thumb is that dammed lakes must allow outflow equal to inflow, and as Glenn, our neighbor, and the president independently confirmed, Goulding Creek’s inflow to the lake is now zero.

The logical lack of clever alternatives follows from previous musings I’d already made on the subject of water tables. The hydrology specialist the association president had talked to had simply said that it would do no good to release water to the creek. It would simply disappear into the bed and sink to the water table, now below the creek bed, without accomplishing anything. With or without the lake the situation would be the same.

Actually the lake’s presence probably does accomplish *something*. Outflow does occur, after all. It occurs downward through the lake bed and in the same general direction into the water table downstream. So in the end we may be able to thumb our noses in the general direction of the lake and say, “we’ll get your water anyway.”

Last year seemed to be the year of lepidopterans, moths and butterflies. Our weather this year hasn’t exactly been kind to either the adult or larval stages, but the flies have been abundant. Odonates have been abundant both this year and last.

I decided to start putting together a page of flies, and this is something of a start. As I searched back through fly entries, I was amazed at how many there were, and then of course as I began grouping them I realized how few representatives I actually have! Naturally there are many examples - house flies, gnats, mosquitos, and such that I’ve never bothered to photograph but have certainly experienced.

True flies are, of course, in the great Order Diptera, one of many within the Class Insecta in the Phylum Arthropoda. I suppose that I should eventually have an Order Odonata page, and an Order Hymenoptera page. While such pages will also contain small photos for each entry linked to the blog entry, this prototype omits the images.

I’m using Bugguide’s taxonomy here. The five large groupings below are not formal taxa but convenient informal groupings somewhere between order and infra-order. All but the last two blocks are true flies, Order Diptera. The last two blocks are additional orders that just look sort of like flies.

Order Diptera: Flies

Nematocera: Gnats, Midges, Mosquitoes, Sandflies, Craneflies, Phantom Craneflies

Ptychopteridae: Phantom Craneflies

Bittacomorpha clavipes Phantom Cranefly 5.18.07
Bittacomorpha clavipes Phantom Cranefly 5.28.06

Tipulidae: Craneflies

Nephrotoma ferruginea Tiger Cranefly 5.18.07
Nephrotoma ferruginea Tiger Cranefly 5.15.07
Tipula spp Cranefly 4.5.07



Orthorrapha: Bee Flies, Snipe Flies, Mydas Flies, Soldier Flies, Robber Flies, Deerflies and Horseflies

Bombyliidae: Bee Flies

Exoprosopa fasciata Progressive Bee Fly 8.12.07
Xenox tigrinus Tiger Bee Fly 7.4.07
Bombylius major Large Bee Fly 5.27.06

Asilidae: Robber Flies

Diogmites misellus Robber Fly 7.27.07
Laphria virginica Robber Fly 6.18.07
Laphria saffrana Death’s Head Bumble Thief 5.16.07
Machimus notatus Robber Fly 5.12.06
Diogmites spp Robber Fly 7.26.05

Rhagionidae: Snipe Flies

Chysopilus thoracicus Golden-backed Snipe Fly 5.24.07
Chysopilus thoracicus Golden-backed Snipe Fly 5.18.05

Mydidae: Mydas Flies

Mydas clavatus Mydas Fly 7.25.05

Dolichopodidae: Long-legged Flies

Unknown Dolichopodid 5.8.07
Condylostylus spp 7.26.06



Aschiza: Pointed Flies, Big-headed Flies, Syrphid Flies

Syrphidae: Syrphid Flies

Milesia virginiensis Yellowjacket Hoverfly 5.27.07 no photo
Unknown Syrphid 5.27.07
Chalcosyrphus pigra Syrphid Fly 5.4.07
Unknown Syrphid 5.8.07
Allograpta spp 7.18.06
Unknown Syrphid 6.6.06



Calyptratae: Dung Flies, House Flies, Blow Flies, Bot Flies, Flesh Flies

Sarcophagidae: Flesh Flies

Sarcophaga spp 5.4.07



Acalyptratae: Thick-headed Flies, Stilt Flies, Leaf Miner Flies, Stalk-eyed Flies, Marsh Flies

Conopidae: Thick-headed Flies

Stylogaster neglecta Thick-headed Fly 8.13.07
Physocephala tibialis Wasp Mimic 6.9.06

Micropezidae: Stilt-legged Flies

Rainieria spp Ant Mimic 7.29.06

Lauxaniidae: Lauxaniid Flies

Unknown Lauxaniid 5.13.07

Ulidiidae: Picture-winged Flies

Delphinia picta Picture-winged Fly 6.6.06

Lonchaeidae: Lance Flies

Unknown Lonchaeidid 6.6.06



“Flies” not in the Order Diptera

Order Mecoptera: Scorpionflies and Hangingflies

Bittacidae: Hangingflies

Unknown Hangingfly 5.24.07
Bittacus spp 5.4.07



Order Neuroptera: Antlions, Lacewings, Fishflies

Corydalidae: Dobsonflies and Fishflies

Nigronia serricorus Dark Fishfly 5.2.07
Chauliodes pectinicornus Summer Fishfly 5.22.06



Order Odonata: Dragonflies and Damselflies

Just mentioning it. I’ll have to pull together a special page for these.

The American Germander does it again!


This appears to be a Progressive Bee Fly, Exoprosopa fasciata (Bugguide). Why it’s called “progressive” I don’t know. This is a big old fly, about an inch in body length, and the large, outswept wings and bumblebee-like appearance give it away. Most of the Exoprosopa species seem to have distinctive blotches on the wings, but not this one. At first I thought that it might be a Villa bee fly. The wing patterns of Villa are close, but do not as precisely match those of Exoprosopa fasciata.

Unlike the delicate Stylogaster I found last week, which preferred to sip nectar in the early mornings, this one prefers the hottest part of the day in the mid afternoon. Bee fly adults get their food this way, and lay their eggs in the soil near the entrances to the tunnels of other insects. The eggs hatch and the larvae consume those of ants, robber flies, and other insects.

I see that this is the third bee fly discovery here (I wonder how many I’ve missed?). There was a Tiger Bee Fly, Xenox tigrinus, on July 4 this year, and a Large Bee Fly, Bombylius major on May 27 2006.

I much prefer Bev’s fly photo of last September for its very furry abdominal rings, but agree that it’s probably not Exoprosopa, but perhaps a tachinid.

I actually saw another individual (these seem to be females) of this species last Wednesday, while circumnavigating the fence. This one was resting on the ground in the detritus, so it was with some delight that I discovered three specimens hovering over the germander on Friday.



And a few other photos from additional vantage points. The first two are good for matching wing venation patterns, and the last two are of Wednesday’s find:


I ran across two sites of interest while scanning for info on Exoprosopa. First, there’s this very nice quick compendium of a good selection of families of flies. I think I should probably organize a page like this.

Then there’s this "guide to becoming a naturalist". That’s the table of contents of a sort of proto-blog, and here’s the late August page that mentions Exoprosopa

We actually got a small amount, 0.05 inches, of rain yesterday. Naturally it would come while I was otherwise engaged in a meeting in Athens. I was a little miffed to have missed it, but it did wet the ground and vegetation, and that’s all to the good.

Our training session on Thursday night was to have been with Oconee County VFDs, helicopter rescue. We even caravanned to northwest Oconee County, 20 miles away, but only to discover that due to the extreme dry heat they had decided to reschedule the training for another time. Station #8’s Captain did give us a fine tour of their station and well-appointed engines, so we did make the best of the trip.

The front porch has become a major attraction for arachnids lately. An argiope has made a precarious and poorly strategized selection of the corner, at eye level, of the kitchen door, and a modest-sized fishing spider Dolomedes tenebrosus has staked out the entire deck as its territory. I’ve run across it, or more the reverse maybe, both yesterday and this morning, actively hunting.

I took a side excursion to the barely flowing Goulding Creek yesterday and was rewarded with this large, plush Pisaurid:


She had stitched together the top leaves of a mint for her nursery (first thumbnail below) and was perched atop the construction. She immediately fled into the nest when she caught sight of me. I gently pulled apart the leaves and she took up position on one of them, and was thereafter cooperative.

On June 22 I photographed a Pisaurid nesting atop a pitcher plant, and had identified it as Pisaurina mira, but I now think that was actually P. brevipes and that *this* one is P. mira. I’m going by the body patterning and degree of hairiness, mostly, but scanning over the Pisaurid photographs at Bugguide it looks like even they may have gotten a few of the photographs switched between species. In fact, I’m still not entirely certain - Cal Photos has a matching shot of P. mira here, and the Nearctic Spider Database shows a match to June 22 as P. brevipes here. But Bev’s PBase page on Pisaurids shows P. mira to more closely resemble my June 22 catch. I’m *fairly* certain, anyway, that yesterday’s is not a Dolomedes species.

Anyway, it’s a big furry teddy spider!

And a few other photos of additional vantage points:

Speaking for ourselves, Glenn and I very much enjoyed the aforementioned visit of nephew Travis, and Michelle. We took a walk up SBS Creek on Wednesday afternoon, and I spied this fine hole about 30 feet up a sourwood. The hole is about 6 inches in diameter, I’d say, and looks to be fairly old judging by the scar tissue around the rim. Still, I’ve never noticed it before, and it probably could stand some further observation on a cooler day. Karen at Rurality and Pablo enroute from Roundrock remind us that we aren’t the only ones experiencing formidable heat in the last couple of weeks. The coastal plain along the Atlantic in South Carolina and Georgia in particular have been hit hard, and the daily maximum seems to climb as you work your way inward through Alabama, east Tennessee, and Missouri.

Nonetheless, we’ve seen highs in the mid-100s on a daily basis for ten days now. and no rain at all in the last 17 days. Every successive day of extreme temperatures without precipitation pulls another aliquot of moisture from already depleted soil, and so our KBDI is somewhere between 674 and 730 now. From :

KBDI: Keetch-Byram Drought Index (KBDI) measures moisture in deep duffs or upper soil layers. The relative dryness of soil is important in fire suppression. KBDI varies from 0 (Wet) to 800 (Dry).

On July 29 I reported that the lower half of Sparkleberrysprings Creek had gone dry for the first time in at least 22 years. Our hike on Wednesday revealed that the entire length of the Creek is now dry. Here is a bend in the uppermost reaches of the creek, formerly a babbling little brook:


This isn’t a result of the last two weeks without rain - this is the cumulative result of the last two years, and really the last nine years, of average deficit. Microecologically it’s something of a disaster. We do, after all, have, or had, a small aquatic ecology of crustaceans, aquatic insects and larvae, amphibians, and small fish. There are two pools remaining, mostly as the result of a small dam I built five or six years ago. Without flow, these reservoirs will gradually disappear too, and I assume that that will be it for whatever unique fauna had built up over the decades before.

My nephew Travis, and his girlfriend Michelle arrived yesterday and are visiting, so this will just be a short hello. Travis is about to begin college at Loyola University in New Orleans, and we’re all quite pumped about that. I did get some good pics of a great fly but that will have to wait.

Instead, I’ll take the lazy way out and direct you to this charming New Yorker piece by the wonderfully eclectic Oliver Sacks.

Previously undisclosed fact: Our subscription to the New Yorker is as old as our partnership is. Pieces like this remind me of why I love the New Yorker, despite my complete lack of connection with the city.

I’m likely to be involved otherwise in the next day or two, so just a short post today.

Two butterfly observations: Some very nice Red-banded Hairstreaks have been canvassing the area lately. A single Monarch was seen yesterday. No photographs as yet.

What with the past week being between semesters, I’ve occupied myself with playing the role of weather instrument and documenting this past week of high temperatures (except for Sunday). The comparisons between Athens and Wolfskin have proven to be interesting enough - I have discovered not just the urban heat island effect but also the effect of urban heat buffering.

The latter became clear in yesterday’s measurements which I took more finely. In the lower right panel you can see that during the several hours of peak heat, Wolfskin temperatures wave a good bit more than Athens temperatures. This isn’t seen so much for nighttime cool temperatures, or just after or before dawn or dusk. In the absence of a real front moving through I attribute this to higher variability in the temperatures of local breezes wafting through the Wolfskin area. In Athens, local breezes are pretty much homogeneous in temperatures.

The middle left panel on Aug 10 was truncated because of the wildland fire call on that day.

Looks like the rest of the week will be a repeat of last week. Yesterday’s high was predicted to be the upper 90s and we achieved 101/102 (Athens/Wolfskin). Today through Friday are predicted to be 100, 101, 102, and 98, so we could certainly have another day or two of record-breaking temperatures.

Without rain since the last week of July, and following up on Mark’s observations of trees in northwest Georgia - we definitely have several oaks turning brown and losing leaves. Whether this is because they’re dying or just going dormant under early stress will remain to be seen.

Idle hands are the Devil’s tools:



UPDATE: Just by coincidence, NPR’s Climate Connections had a piece this morning on the effects of extremely high temperatures, urban heat island effect, and acclimatization to heat, in Phoenix, AZ, where it’s hot even by their standards. The link is here.

Yesterday was notable in two respects. First it became official: We broke 110 years of high temp records for five consecutive days, Aug 7-11: 101, 102, 105, 104, 102 degF in Athens, officially. Here in Oglethorpe County it was 102, 104, 106, 107, 104. And then yesterday a weak trough formed and cool air forced its way in, at least until mid afternoon, when they did break 90 degF. I did have to attend a meeting in Athens, where oddly the temps had climbed to 96 degF, a reminder of how awful it is to live in the city. (Of course those mid-80s temps were accompanied by 75% relative humidity, which gave a heat index of 95 degF, so if you were moving around you were scarcely improved by the situation.) Today though the hot weather will resume, with forecasts just around 100 degF and no rain for the next five days, at least.

Second, yesterday’s American Germander has yielded up yet another insect visitor, this one an exquisite little thick-headed fly, about half a centimeter long. I saw these little guys visiting the flowers late last week in the early morning but was not able to get them photographed until yesterday. They’re very excitable, and take note and flee at the slightest detection of movement, so the only thing for it was to focus in on a particular plant and then wait for the stars to align right.

In the early morning, under heavy cloud, the lighting wasn’t so great but this landing approach reminded me of a beefly formerly observed and that put me on exactly the wrong track to identification.


The fly isn’t one of the Bombyliidae but instead a Thick-headed Fly, Conopidae, and more specifically Stylogaster probably neglecta. The landing pose here is characteristic.


I’ve run into thick-headed flies once before, when I mistook one for a wasp, and that’s a common mistake. That particular one wasn’t a Stylogaster, and was a much better wasp mimic. Fortunately Bev of Burning Silo put me on track in that case, and when I emailed her with early photos of this one she replied with a wealth of information.


Like other members of this family, the adults feed on flower nectar, and larvae are endoparasitic. The eggs are laid on or in other insects, and the larvae develop inside. It seems a precarious way to go, as the victim may be snarfed up by some predator, baby thick-heads and all, but it must work. Bev emailed me the following Stephen Marshall reference:

The oddest flies to be traditionally grouped with the thick-headed flies belong to a genus of gangly-legged species characterized by an enormously long, bent proboscis and a long, skinny female abdomen that looks and acts like a spear gun. The “spear” delivered by this remarkable ovipositor is a long, barbed, harpoon-like egg that is jabbed into another insect, such as a cockroach or cricket.

These conspicuously armed parasitoids, all in the genus Stylogaster, occur as far north as Canada, but they are most abundant in the Neotropics, where they are associated with army ant raids. If you are ever lucky enough to witness and army ant raid, look along the front edge of the swarm for dozens of Stylogaster hovering almost motionless as they wait for the ants to flush out potential cockroach targets. The word “target” rather than “host” is appropriate here, since no one has actually reared out a Stylogaster from a speared cockroach. One northeastern North American species of Stylogaster has been reared from crickets, but the life cycles of the very abundant Neotropical Stylogaster remain a bit of a mystery. Some authors put Stylogaster in its own family (Stylogastridae), while others treat it as a subfamily (Stylogastrinae).

In the photograph above, and in this one, you can pretty clearly see the extremely long, elbow-bent proboscis, and the funnel-shaped mouthpart extended (anyone remember the Ardelia Lortz character in Stephen King’s “The Library Policeman”?).


And a few other photos of additional vantage points:


Oh - and by the way - we had excellent clear, dark skies this morning, but nothing out of the ordinary in the matter of the Perseids. A few nice meteors, but no more than you’d see on any other night.

It’s supposed to be a *little* cooler today, may not even break 100, and so while still hot, it’s no longer so interesting. I suppose it’s in the nature of this sort of thing that to remain interesting it must simply get hotter.

You could do worse than plant American Germander, Teucrium canadense. The photo is of an unopened inflorescence, with the more developed buds at the bottom. We’ve done this plant before, last year at this time, but a couple of things are worth noting. First, the clump of plants seems to be doing better than just about anything else in the heat, enthusiastically flowering and only wilting a little in the last few days. This is despite the relatively poor soil it’s in, and most references indicate that it would prefer a moister, even shadier location. So it seems to be a fairly adaptable plant. Second, while it has spread since last year, it’s not becoming a problem (it *is* a mint, after all). Perhaps it’s the poor soil and drier than preferred conditions that are handicapping it somewhat. It’s also attractive to a good diversity of arthropods. I’ve seen but not yet photographed several species of crab and jumping spiders on it, and here’s a few other things, none especially new here, found on or around the clump.

Skippers. Hundreds, *thousands* of them. I suppose you could spend a year or two specializing in skipper identification, but I think I’ll skip it. This one was cute, though:


Little wild bees charm me, and this presumptive Green Metallic Bee, Augochlorini spp., with its reddish legs, is no exception. Not the best photo, though.


Another head shot, and we’ve seen this one before too:


It’s our Eastern Pondhawk, Erythemis simplicicollis, and the population has increased considerably in number this year.


They are photogenic, and not easily frightened. The other evening I noticed one continually patrolling WVFD Station, round and round, though it must be at least half a mile from the nearest water source.

May you live in interesting times!

This was the setting at 3pm yesterday when we got the pageout along with all other 13 VFDs in Oglethorpe County. Extensive brush fire in Vesta, everyone come to the party! BYOW! Well, we’ve got lots of W, 2500 gallons of it. I got to the station first this time, and had the tanker out and running. I was just locking everything up when Ed and Scott arrived, and off we went.

I wish I had taken the camera, now. It was indeed extensive, burning most of the length along the north side of Veribest Enterprise Road in northeast Oglethorpe County, and deep into the woods. That part of the county is probably 15 miles northeast of us, and the most distant fire we’ve been to so far.

We turned onto V-E Road and were directed all the way down to the other end, at the cemetary, where Vesta had set up Incident Command for the VFDs. The IC directed us to pull up behind that li'l white truck there, and sit tight, after informing us of the location of the nearest hydrant (three miles away!). At this point Georgia Forestry Commission had the fire mainly under control, and our role, as well as that of the other VFDs, was support if needed. We were there to provide water, and indeed did fill up one truck. Most of the other pumpers and knockers were targetted to houses in the area to protect them if necessary.

And then along about 7pm we were released and back home we went, stopping along the way to top off the tank and get gas.

A few observations:

I don’t know when or how the fire started. The burn was so extensive it must have been involved for a considerable period of time. The part we could see looked basically like the results of a controlled burn - groundcover burned off but trees generally unharmed.

As far as I can tell there was at least one truck from every VFD in the county. Plus EMS, Sheriff, and GA Forestry crew. Yet traffic along the road was well controlled and nondisruptive.

GA Forestry is superb. They had a spotter plane circling over all afternoon, presumably providing observations to the ground.

Residents of the area continually moved up and down the road offering water. Finally, a legitimate use for ATVs: water delivery. At less extensive fires there is normally a rehab station (and there probably was one here too), but in this case rehab came to us at regular intervals.

Apparently the fire was significant enough to have made the news earlier. One of us had actually heard about it on the radio and not his pager, and dropped by just as we were leaving the station.

The fire could have been much, much worse, given our past week of elevated temperatures and lack of rain since late July. There could have been wind. I’d have to attribute successful control to what I saw as very well-coordinated and competent firefighting. Coordination among 14 VFDs and Forestry is not necessarily an easy thing!

Apparently no one got hurt, and it is possible to function at 107 degF!

or, Why we don’t live in Athens.

I do recall from the 14 years that we did live in Athens that it would be hot well into the very late night, nearly every night, for three months. We didn’t have air conditioning then, either, and nights were terrible. When we moved out here to Wolfskin, 12 miles out of town, one of the first things we noticed was how cool the nights were in the summer, mostly without exception.

Maybe it’s overdoing the topic of the current weather, but the current weather is certainly topical, and a glance at yesterday’s nationwide high temperature map shows that a lot of us can play. We have now officially broken the high temperature records for three consecutive days, will certainly do so for today, and almost certainly tomorrow as well.

Looking over my favorite Observations and Records for Athens there have been seven days since 1898 when the temperatures were hotter than yesterday’s peak here in Wolfskin:


And the hottest temperatures ever recorded in Athens were 108 degF in July 12 1930, July 19 1913, and July 21 1926. So we’re just a couple of degrees shy of breaking that record, and today is supposed to be a couple of degrees hotter than yesterday.

(I should note that combined with the 30% relative humidity this works out to a heat index of 113 degF. The heat index is, of course, how hot it actually feels, with the subtext of how miserable you should feel, for we should all feel as miserable as possible. I wasn’t miserable at all, an indication of the power of the pleasure of observation and experience over misery. I admit it’s a subtle thing and something that will cause others impervious to these inclinations to squint at you suspiciously. It could get old though, quickly, and all indications are that this is going to go on for the foreseeable future. In the meantime I will keep up my spirits by jotting down data.)

Back to the urban heat island of Athens. Athens is not a particularly large city, maybe 100,000 people when students are in residence. I monitored yesterday’s temperatures here in Wolfskin, and added temperatures from UGA’s Climatology Research Lab on campus. Here’s a self-explanatory plot of those data:


Several interesting things:

First, and I’ve generally noticed this before: in the summer we out here will usually experience peak temperatures a couple degrees hotter than those in Athens. (I’ve been through several thermometers, so that’s unlikely to be the explanation, and I keep mine on the north side of the house where the sun never shines, as it never shines elsewhere, too.) So while the Athens high yesterday was just over 103 degF, our high was 105.8.

Second is the rate of temperature increase and decrease. Athens temperatures will initially be higher than ours by as much as 5 degF in the early morning, and will increase more slowly than ours. We reached 100 degF at noon. Athens didn’t make 100 degF until 1pm.

Finally, and here’s the payoff, our temperatures drop much more rapidly to a final low much lower than in Athens. Our temperatures began dropping around 4:30pm yesterday and by the time I left for WVFD training last night were below 100 deg at 6pm. Athens temperatures did not start dropping until sometime well after 6pm, though I wasn’t around to record that.

And look at those late evening temperatures. While we’re enjoying having dropped below 80 degF by 11pm, Athens has just dropped below 90 degF. No wonder we were uncomfortable at night in Athens! Poor Athens!

There are probably several things going on here, but I think the main explanation is heat capacity, the property of different matter to accumulate heat at different rates, depending on what the matter is. Athens has a high heat capacity, relative to ours, and so takes longer to heat up, but unfortunately for its inhabitants, much longer to cool off as well, once the sun is down.

We discussed these matters and more at training (where, by the way, and in reference to an earlier prediction I made , one of our crew related that at least one 50-foot bored well in the area has gone dry). The pageout for the training came at 5:30pm, and although I didn’t monitor 911 pageouts as scrupulously as usual, did note that there were no pageouts for training for the other fire departments in the county - usually there are half a dozen such. So the four of us were smug about that, with references to mad dogs, Englishmen, and Wolfskin.

Training was light, though. We pulled out the supertanker and tested out our new 3000 gallon drop tank, filling it with a full tank of water. The Unknown Firefighter disappeared briefly, and then returned in shorts with an air mattress and paddled around in the pool for a half hour or so. It is entirely appropriate for him to have anointed the much larger tank, since he did the lion’s share of the work in acquiring it, to replace the somewhat damaged 2500 gallon one that we received when the truck arrived in 2006.

Note: water in tanker probably no longer potable . Don’t be shocked - we all do it. It’s irresistable.

UPDATE: Weather Underground has just updated today’s forecast for Athens to 105 degF. Given that yesterday’s ultimate forecast was for 102, we might just break the all-time record. Stay tuned!

First, I enjoyed watching NASA’s coverage of the liftoff of Endeavor, STS-118, yesterday at 1836. Except for the little problem with closing and sealing the hatch, everything went off perfectly and the onboard cameras provided some excellent visualization of the goings on during liftoff and orbit.

We’re certainly not the only ones experiencing heat these last few days. It seems like the entire eastern US is under a heat advisory. It turned out that Monday *did* break the official 119-year Athens record, and if so then I suspect that yesterday’s peak here of 103.8 degF will too. I wouldn’t be surprised if today did also - the forecast is for even higher temperatures.


The analog thermometer on the right above has a little problem at higher temperatures, so the 107 degF it professes is almost certainly 3 or 4 degF too high. The digital is correct though - I’ve calibrated it with a lab thermometer. Some of you in the southwest will be unimpressed - and of course you should be. It *may* be that we’ve had higher temperatures here in the past 30 years, but I don’t recall them specifically.

Then there’s this, that I found yesterday morning while eradicating. In fact, it’s on a Microstegium plant, and although I don’t detect any damage of the plant and the larva seems to be only resting, there still remains that possibility that it feeds on our evil weed. It puts me in mind of a similar, though much larger soft-bodied larva I found two years ago in June, and was never able to identify. This one yesterday was about 2 inches long, thin, and lacked many of the markings of the one I found two years ago:


I’m guessing that the left end is anterior, and the left thumbnail shows that end. The posterior end shows well-developed cerci (?).


From the side:


There seem to be two pairs of thoracic legs (lepidopterans have three, but the first pair is often smaller and I could have missed those), left thumbnail. And there are three well-developed pairs of abdominal prolegs (right) with another more anterior pair less well-developed. This would be within the range of expectation for a lepidopteran.


From what I can tell of the photos from two years ago, the setup seems to be pretty similar. Haven’t been able to find any matches for this critter though, and the terminal appendages are certainly odd for a caterpillar!

Yesterday, 3:18pm: 102.7 degF. The current record for August 7 is 102 degF in 1930, but I suspect that officially the Athens station will not report a temperature that high.

No animals were harmed in the making of this photograph. By the way, that Martha Stewart oasis, charged with a very slightly leaky hose, is popular with cats and butterflies. Note the freedom drains running approximately in line with the hose.


And that’s the way it was, greater than 100 degF, from 2pm until 5pm. At 15% relative humidity and a slight breeze, I was just relieved that there were no fire calls.

I’m guessing this to be a Thread-waisted Wasp (now why would I guess that?), Eremnophila aureonotata. About 1.5 inches long, it’s feeding on False Aster, aka White Doll’s Daisy, Boltonia asteroides. It didn’t seem to mind the heat at all.


It’s another digger wasp. The adults feed on nectar, but also dig holes to lay eggs and stock the pantry with a lepidopteran larva. That’s quite a fragile-looking connection between the abdomen and thorax, there. Scarlett would be green with envy.


BTW, that False Aster is quite a nice plant. It is very adaptable and produces tons of white flowers (I understand there are also pink varieties). Butterflies aren’t particularly attracted to it, but tiny bees and wasps are. It also seems to be deer resistant.

My observation on June 21 that peak heat would begin to turn downward 41 days later, after July 31, has proved to be incorrect. (In fairness to myself, I pointed out the folly of such a prediction.)

And so after the moderate temperatures of July, I suppose we had to pay. Highs forecast through Saturday: 100 today, then 99, 99, 99, and 95. Add a couple of degrees for our immediate location, which always seems to hold that trend. Rain? Ha ha!

Finals for summer semester ended August 3, and fall semester responsibilities don’t begin until August 17, so I’m spending the time wisely, at least in the mornings. It’s a balancing act, the Microstegium pulling. I generally get get going as soon as light permits, 8AM or so, and then return around noon, when the temperatures are well above 90F. But during that time when temperatures are at least somewhat moderate, the humidity is very high - 60-80% - and under the breezeless canopy the sweat accumulates without evaporation. As the morning proceeds, Gene loses interest in dashing about and climbing trees, and becomes cranky and increasingly insistant on persuading me to return. I point out that I didn’t ask him to come with me in the first place, and he sits down and pants. Yes, pants. Cats do pant, a very odd behavior on par with their growling under some circumstances.

By 1pm, the heat is approaching its peak and remains that way until 5 or 6pm. Relative humidity is down to 40% and that’s a small relief. Time for a siesta!

Two good things: Brachyelytrum erectum, Bearded Shorthusk, and the newcomer Leersia virginica, White Cutgrass. I’ve been watching the former for several years now and have considerable hope for its ability to compete out the Microstegium, given half a chance. The only complaint (there had to be one) is that it is producing seed right now, and they have a pointy set of awns that lodge in the socks and are quite prickly and difficult to pull out. I’m willing to put up with that.

The White Cutgrass may turn out to be an additional competitor. We discovered it growing in a few places last year, but this year it has appeared much more densely and in many more places along the banks of the creek. The only problem is that it resembles Microstegium in texture and habit, and so where the two grow simultaneously, it can be a trial to weed out the latter.

Both are natives, and robust at that. I’ve so perturbed the Microstegium populations now that it’s going to be hard to interpret observations or set up experiments to test interactions. In the Integrated Pest Management strategy both of these plants may be important tools.

You might have heard, in the last few months, that US demographics passed a milestone of sorts: now more than half the population lives in cities. If you get involved in conversations on the topic of sustainable lifestyles, you’ll almost certainly run into the occasional person passionate about urban life. They make a good point - urban dwellers (as opposed to suburban or rural) have relatively small transportation requirements - they can usually bicycle to work or to shop, for instance. The high population density means they use much less space than nonurbs. Centralization means that food transport costs less than for nonurb types who are diffuse and more expensive to maintain, financially and ecologically.

Science fiction has visited various “hive scenarios” many times, and today I’ll pick three that are provocative and fun.

Isaac Asimov’s “The Caves of Steel” (1954) provides a fine description of overpopulated Earth society, 1400 years from now, when Earthmen [sic] now live exclusively in vast Cities, completely cut off from the open sky. Indeed, agoraphobia is the rule, and Earthmen are psychologically incapable of leaving their Cities, even for another, except under extremely controlled circumstances. To stand in open space, under the unobstructed sky, is unthinkable. Robots do all the work in the vast agricultural fields needed to feed the eight billions of Earth.

Earthmen are cut off, by mutual loathing and agreement, from the other faction of humanity, the Spacers. The Spacers are the opposite extreme. Having colonized the Fifty Outer Worlds by 400 years from now, they’ve been isolated from Earthmen for a millenium, and have become very strange. Whereas the separation has lasted for forty generations from the point of view of Earthmen, it’s only been a half-dozen or so generations for the Spacers, who live up to four centuries. They keep their population density low, live on vast estates serviced completely by robots, and in some cases have developed a pathological fear of being anywhere close to other humans.

The Cities of Earth are merely the backdrop for the story, which is actually a murder mystery. “The Caves of Steel” is the first in a series of four books, and is the one that introduces Elijah Bailey of Earth (plain-clothes detective) and R. Daneel Olivaw (the “R” stands for robot), a Spacer humaniform construct. The two are forced to become partners in solving the murder of a Spacer on the only Spacer outpost allowed on Earth. The other three books take place primarily off-Earth, with the second exploring the Spacer society as the first explores the Earthman City society.

And so we have views of the strips (multilaned slidewalks moving at different speeds) and the game “running the strips”, the tiny apartments, the Personals (public bathrooms - there are no private ones for the vast majority), the automats (automated cafeterias devoid of amibience), and the Hum of the City. In all of this it is clear that the inhabitants, however impoverished and hivelike they may seem to us, are happy and content and would want things no other way.

Something tells me that Asimov has made a realistic projection, under the circumstances of his givens. While *I* wouldn’t be happy in such a setting, I can well imagine that a huge number of people would.

The second book is one of Larry Niven’s lesser-known ones, “Oath of Fealty” (1981), cowritten with Jerry Pournelle. (For anyone who reads science fiction, Larry Niven is up there with the best, in his own way. You don’t read him for his clearly cardboard cutout characters and unbeautiful prose, you read him for his excellent imagination. See “Ringworld”, "World of Ptaavs", “Lucifer’s Hammer”, "The Mote in God’s Eye". )

“Oath of Fealty” is certainly not the best or most typical of Niven’s stories, but does involve Todos Santos, the world’s first arcology. The single building houses a quarter million people in a volume 1000 feet high and a square mile in area, the highest population density on earth. It’s built in the near future outside of Los Angeles (of course) and the tensions between the two cities are high.

Todos Santos is clearly a success, and also foreshadows the paternalistic, highly controlled society of Asimov’s Cities. Niven and Pournelle take great pains to minimize the less benevolent aspects, security and constant surveillance being among the least of them, of life in an arcology. They take equally great pains to try to convince the reader of the self-sufficiency of the arcology, but generally fail in this. Todos Santos, built actually as a prototype for the first starship, is clearly the wave of the future in urban planning. But it is equally clearly totally dependent on goods, energy, and food coming in from the outside. It relies on the high-tech expertise of its carefully selected inhabitants to provide services in exchange for goods. You won’t find a lower class in Todos Santos - they’ve been filtered out.

Niven’s imagination isn’t quite so well-displayed here as in earlier work, but he does explore the idea of implants. Several of the higher-ups have them, and it allows them to communicate through thought beamed by microwave with MILLIE, Todos Santos' central computer. A side-benefit is that through MILLIE they can communicate near-telepathically with others who have implants.

And again, the inhabitants of Todos Santos are deliriously happy. They all love the utter artificiality of the arcology, they are fiercely loyal to the city and its managers, and they even love the surveillance aspect. They’re probably right to do so - the main tension in the story comes from the FROMATEs, militant environmentalists intent upon destroying the arcology through infiltration and subversion.

Niven and Pournelle don’t accomplish quite the easy, good job that Asimov did in convincing me that hive cities can result in happy populations. Part of this I think is that Niven and Pournelle are desperate to convince me that the inhabitants of Todos Santos are happy because they live *better* lives than you or I do, whereas Asimov merely had to convince me that the inhabitants of his Cities lived lives, while not trying to brainwash me that those lives were better.

I’ve saved the best for last, partly because it’s so strange, and partly because it clinches the idea that what is a horrifying dystopia from the outside is a magnificent utopia from the inside. In the previous two books, at least the characters are unmistakeably human!

Words of the brood mother, Trova Hellstrom. I welcome the day when I will go into the vats and become one with all our people.

(Dated October 26, 1896)

This is “Hellstrom’s Hive”, by Frank Herbert (1972), author of “Dune” and its less well-regarded multiple sequels. Again, a little history:

"The best must breed with the best. In that way we produce the disparate workers we need for every task our Hive can confront."

On that cold April day in 1876, when they had begun to dig out from the natural caverns beneath the farm, building their first Hive, she had told them, "We will perfect our way and thus become the ‘meek’ whose earth will one day welcome them."

Fast forward a century or so, and “The Agency” has become interested in Nils Hellstrom’s movie-making venture in the eastern part of Oregon. What they don’t know, until later, is this:

This cell he [Nils Hellstrom] now occupied dated from the first digging, although the diggers and his brood mother had long ago gone into the vats. The cell was sixteen feet wide and twenty-two feet long, eight feet from floor to ceiling. It was not quite square at the rear to accomodate an arm of the original natural cavern. The cell could have had a door in that arm, but the decision had been made to put service conduits, piping, and other ducts there. From the original limestone labyrinth, the Hive had been extended downward more than a mile, reaching outward in a circle almost two miles in diameter below the three-thousand-foot level. It was a teeming warren of nearly fifty thousand workers (far beyond his brood mother’s hopes), closely integrated with their own factories, hydroponics gardens, laboratories, breeding centers, even an underground river that helped produce the power they required. No wall of the original cavern could be seen now. All walls were a uniform smooth gray of their own mucilaginous prestressed concrete.

Trova Hellstrom may have been nutty as a fruitcake in the late 19th century, but her descendents now comprise a caste society built and controlled by genetics and pheromones, truly insectoid as she envisioned. There is the leadership caste, almost normal in outward appearance, whom we encounter in the person of Dr. Nils Hellstrom, and who interface with the outside to hide and protect the Hive until it has developed its “stinger”.

Then there is the brood mother caste, who will produce the next generation and whom we encounter as the unconciously driven young woman, Fancy:

From the Hive breeding record. This includes all of the breeding batch designated Fractionated Actinomycin Complex Y (FANCY) series. Although they offer us a great potential in several specializations desperately needed by the Hive, they may harbor a strain of instability. This instability may be evidenced in a heightened breeding drive, in which case it can be diverted to the Hive’s advantage. However, other symptoms may crop up and should be reported to Breeding Central immediately.

Most strangely, there’s the Physical Researcher caste, who will ultimately develop, with the successful conclusion of Project 40, the “stinger” that ensures the Hive’s survival:

The physical researchers were instantly recognizable. In addition to the magnificent braincase, the gene line that produced them could not be separated from the sought-after specialization and marked them as even further differentiated from the original wild form. Their legs were stunted stumps, and each specialist required the constant attendance of a pale, muscular, chemically neutered worker bred especially for brawn and a pliable disposition. Because of the useless legs, they were moved about on spidery wheeled carts or in the attendants' arms. Although the researchs' arms were not stunted, they were spindly and weak, with hands that bore long, delicate fingers. These specialists were genetically sterile as well, each one a single creation ending in its own flesh. Since their driving need for full intellect meant they could not have their emotions chemically tempered, they tended to a touch irrascibility in their dealings with all other workers. Even their symbiote attendant came in for such attacks.

Surely nothing good can come from this, and as the Wild Humans begin to discover the enormity of the threat, the Hive is feeling swarming pressures.

Ecologically Hellstrom’s Hive is a disaster, really. It’s noted in the book that the area of the valley housing the Hive is stripped bare of animal life, as workers conduct night searches to bring in all sources of food. Of course, this first Hive is constrained to be secretive, to not betray its presence, and future Hives may prove to be less destructive to the biotic environment.

“Hellstrom’s Hive” is so out there, that it seems unlikely. Or maybe not.

When I’m feeling jaded and cynical, there’s no better cure than surfing over to NASA and watching a launch. Provided you have a fast connection, of course!

It’s not just the liftoff itself, it’s the before and after too. NASA does a fantastic job of capturing in real time the last minute preparations and checks, and conveying the immediately prelaunch tensions. And it’s a real pleasure to see the relief and happiness after the second stage cutoff when all is well. We watched the final preparations and launch at 5:26:34 EDT this morning of the Phoenix mission. The launch went off perfectly, and within 13 minutes the spacecraft was in parking orbit and travelling at more than 15,000 mph. They’re not going to waste any time either - within 90 minutes the spacecraft will be inserted into its transfer orbit and will be on its way to Mars. UPDATE: 7:10am - it’s on its way!

All image credits to NASA!

The Microstegium eradication is proceeding well ahead of schedule, with population numbers imploded in most areas. It’s worth noting that the March 1 flood (was there a time when we actually had rain?) deposited considerable amount of upstream sand along many banks of Goulding and SBS Creeks. Unfortunately it also deposited Microstegium seed from upstream, and in some places the numbers are very dense. SBS Creek is manageable, but I’m going to have to give up on the banks of Goulding Creek, I’m afraid.

One long-time mystery was cleared up yesterday. I’ve noted for several years a population of dark green, recumbant trifoliate legumes just down from the Kat Sematary. In the absence of flowering I’d tentatively decided they were a species of Desmodium, or beggar-ticks. Yesterday’s discovery of several flowers showed them to be Clitoria mariana, or Butterfly Pea (the clover-like leaves cluttering the photo are of Oxalis):


The “pealike” flowers are quite large, 2 inches or so long. Like all Fabaceae, there are five petals involved. One petal, greatly extended in this species, is called the banner, or standard. Two partially fused petals, smaller than in other pealike flowers, form the wings. The keel is usually much more pronounced but here is reduced to a white covering of two fused petals.


The flowers look less than pealike for several reasons - the reduction of the wings and keel, for one. And the flower presents itself upside down, with the banner more scoop or cup shaped.

The Lepidopteran Hosts Database shows two species attracted as larvae. One that I haven’t seen is Urbanus proteus, or Long-tailed Skipper, which also chews on some cultivated bean plants.

Butterfly Pea occurs throughout much of the eastern two-thirds of the US, and possibly north into Canada. I notice that USDA Plants refers to it with the common name of Atlantic Pigeon-wings, which may be an effort to distinguish it from the look-alike Centrosema virginianum, Spurred Butterfly Pea. The most obvious difference between the two is that in the latter, the keel and wings are much larger relative to the banner, otherwise the two have very similar superficial twining habits and trifoliate leaves.


Nice catch!

July was a month of some moderation for many of us, especially in the Southeast. However rains still continued in Texas and the surroundings, and extreme drought in the Pacific southwest.

Here’s the monthly summary of the climate of the month of July 2007, here in Athens and US-wide.

From the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center, below is a plot of mean temperature anomalies for the US. That’s the difference in the average temperature for this July above or below the average for July over many years, plotted in colors. The anomalies are in Fahrenheit.



The high temperature anomalies in June reversed in many places in July, especially in the East, though the unusual Texas coolness since May continued throughout July. This was also reflected in unusual rainfall in this part of the country. Florida and the Northwest Pacific, cooler than usual during early summer, trended toward the average or slightly above. Higher temperatures, 2-6 degF and even as high as 8 degF above the norm, were seen throughout much of the west, especially in Montana and Idaho.

Again from the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center, below is a plot of mean precipitation anomalies for the US, in July. The south-center of the country that has received above-normal rainfall since June is still up to 100% or more than usual throughout July. Southern California was still anywhere from 50-100% below normal, continuing a trend that has persisted for months now. At least some rains finally came to much of the Southeast, coming close to normal levels.



For Athens:

The extremes of dry weather we’ve been experiencing since the beginning of 2006, if you wish to be kind and open-minded, broke somewhat. We were still below average by the end of the month, but well within the standard deviation for the first time this year.

Here is the plot for our monthly accumulation of rain here in Athens for the month of July. The red line is the average over the last 18 years of July, and the river of peach defines the standard deviation range. Blue areas mean above-average; mustard areas are below. A few blue areas show that we had a surplus of rain for at least a period of a few days, though we did end the month below normal.


It’s more appropriate to present the low temperatures during July, this month. The Athens area enjoyed considerable relief from the very high temperatures experienced during June. Nighttime temperatures have been deliriously pleasant, for the most part. As usual, the green line is for this year, and the red line is for last year, 2006. The blue line declares the historical high temperatures for each day.


In the end we around Athens had ZERO days during July above the 17-year average for that day. There were only five days when the temps exceeded 92 degF. There were 11 very pleasant nights (and one very fine day) when the lows were at least one standard deviation below the average low, and that’s an 18-year record.

All in all, July was, for Athens and surroundings, a very moderate and relatively pleasant month. That still doesn’t refute that as of the last few days all of Georgia, save one county, has been declared a disaster area due to drought. We are still 12 inches below normal for the year, having had only 19 inches of rain as opposed to a normal 32 inches by this time. That’s on top of last year’s 10 inch deficit out of 49 inches normal, as I mentioned here, and in the drying of SBS Creek. It will take many months of above normal rainfall to turn that around.

And it should be said that if I think we have it bad, Alabama and Mississippi have had it far worse. I’m not sure about Mississippi, but both Georgia and Alabama governors have issued proclamations to "pray for rain". While it may be a sweet, vote-getting sentiment, it doesn’t pay the bills and I can’t imagine how it discourages ignorance. Let’s hope they’re also taking secular steps to provide relief and educate the red-state public as to climate change.

Geekstuff:
NOAA’s weekly ENSO update: After sea surface temperature anomalies in the equatorial Pacific dropped below normal in March, they returned to normal state in April and remained that way throughout June and July, perhaps slightly below normal. Indications are a little more waffley for a La Nina to develop in the next 1-3 months. This is fine with me, since that would mean higher than normal temperatures and continued lower than normal rainfall.

Today is Aug 1 and that means the Perseid meteor show peaking on the night of August 12 and ramping up to its peak in the wee hours of August 13. The moon is new this time, so the skies are dark. May they not be cloudy.

The Mars Phoenix launch has been postponed until probably Saturday at one of two times. While very few of us would be able to see it, we’ll almost certainly be hearing about it in nine months or so. The payload is the Phoenix Lander. It won’t be running around photographing vistas like a rover. Instead it will be landing in the Martian Arctic, will stay in place and it’s going to be digging.

This brings up Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy and the “timeslip”, a charming idea. Mars' day is a bit over half an hour longer than Earth’s. To keep, for his colonists, a synchrony with the admittedly arbitrary 24-hour timekeeping standard, Robinson invented the midnight timeslip. At midnight, all clocks stop, for that 30+ minute period. Afterward, they resume again at 00:00:01. He does a great job of mystifying that half hour, something we here won’t ever experience.

Of course by adopting the inflexible 24-hour standard when the Earth day is just shy of a minute under 24 hours long, we accumulate our own timedebt. We resolve it once every 4 years with a leap day. And what do we do with that accumulated time? We treat it like any other day. I sense evil capitalism here. February 29 should be a holiday - why do we continue to let this work til you drop crap continue? Of *course* capitalism would take advantage of that with greeting cards, timeslip gifts, and such, *that's* not what’s particularly evil. Capitalism just doesn’t want us to have an extra day of fun once every four years. *That's* what’s evil.

Now that I think of it, Earth’s revolution period of 365 days (plus the 0.25 days each year) is awfully inconvenient for a 12-month calendar. That’s why we have different numbers of days in various months. As King of the World I say make each month 30 days (except Feb 31, once every four years). Those extra five days? End of year timeslip, and free for all. From Dec 30 to Jan 1. New Year’s Day would remain unchanged.