Neighbours

Are these new digital cameras incredible or what? On our walk this afternoon, we found this Meadowhawk (genus Sympertrum) neighbour and got a fairly close photo.



[According to Stokes Beginner's Guide to Dragonflies, red meadowhawks are very difficult to sort out in the field according to species.]

A few minutes later, we noticed one of our Homo sapiens neighbours, two fields over, at work with his hay baler. Fleur-Ange managed to get these photos of the hay being baled and thrown into the wagon behind. [I remember a different method from when I worked on the farm as a teen.]



Nowadays most farms that I see along the road make large round bales that it takes a tractor to move. It was nice to see some older technology at work making bales that can be handled by hand. I am sure the neighbours horses will enjoy these during the winter. Meanwhile, have a closer look at this machine throwing bales.

Grape Knots

This blog is the result of collaboration between Fleur-Ange and I. She took an initial photo of part of a grape vine which impressed me. I asked for more and pointed out various "knots" that I liked and then took the photos to the computer to play. The results follow.

Just a plain knot:



A knot with a bit of extra:



My first attempt at combining three images:



My second attempt at combining. This time there are six layers:

Assassin Bug

Yesterday, when I came inside to check the ID of the butterfly and bug on the Daisy, I saw a picture of the Assassin Bug in my insect book. I wanted to try to get one more photo of the Ambush Bug and went outside to see if it was still there. It was not, but on a Common Milkweed nearby there was an Assassin Bug.



I managed to get a couple of photos with this one that I thought was good enough to put up on the web. In the process, the bug crawled on my camera, on me, and on various places on the milkweed. So, only this morning did I read that the bug can "inflict a very painful bite." Oops!

Ambush

As I was wandering along one of our east meadow trails today I noticed a Common Wood Nymph (Cercyonis pegala) hanging under an Oxeye Daisy. I approached slowly and managed to take a photo.



The poor thing was much the worse for wear but I could not understand why it was so still when I took its photo. I looked at the other side, for a second photo, and then I noticed why it was so quiet.



The butterfly was attached to an Ambush Bug (Phymatidae family). According to Donald Stokes in his book Observing Insect Lives, Ambush bugs molt 5 times during the summer and then do most of their ambushing on Goldenrod flowers. Even as they are very young, they are deadly to other insects. They lie in wait on or under flowers and when a prey comes by, they grab onto a leg, or some other body part with their special front legs and immediately push their beaklike mouth part into the prey. They first push out a poisonous liquid that both kills their prey and starts to disolve its insides. Then the Ambush Bug just sucks the juices out and discards the remainder.

Ebony Jewelwing

This Ebony Jewelwing (Calopteryx maculata)came to visit us on Sunday as we were working on our art projects. Neither it, nor I, were as quiet as the dragonfly Fleur-Ange photographed last week.



I just updated my wild flower page for this week. My regular wild flower walking group, Fleur-Ange, and I found 145 wild flowers in bloom during this past week. That is the high for the year so far.