This handsome guy is Spitfire and he graced my desktop for a while.
My current desktop photo is a close up of a red dragonfly. He was so good to sit for me for so long and didn’t even freak out when I got right in front of him for this shot. I love the purple and orange patches on his wings.
I thought dragonflies were dragonflies. Red dragonflies, blue dragonflies, green dragonflies, big dragonflies, little dragonflies … but no. They actually have names! This dragonfly is called a half-banded toper. How about that?
I washed the cat water tub out in the yard with rain water last week and a few hours later, when I went outside, there were butterflies all over the place!
The one with black edges on her wings (cause butterflies are always girls) is a pearl crescent. The other one is a spangled fritillary.
We have a lot of the same bugs and critters here in Pennsylvania as we had in Missouri, so these butterflies I was already familiar with.
I love the touch-me-not’s. I have two kinds of them here. I have the spotted touch-me-nots, shown here with the early morning dew on them.
And I have the pale touch-me-not’s which are a little larger than it’s spotted cousin.
And the aster’s are blooming. This one is the New England aster.
Do you remember, back on August 14 I showed you a pretty little flower called virgin’s bower? I told you that I would be showing it to you again because the seeds get feathery tails on them? Do you remember?
Well here’s the seeds all feathered out.
This orange and yellow bug is an instar of something that you might recognize as a green stink bug.
“What’s an instar?” you ask.
In the June 8th issue I talked a little about instars and nymphs. I thought there was a very definite difference between the two, but by the time I went to press, I didn’t have a clear explanation and the only thing I could find online said they were synonymous. I wasn’t very happy with that. I turned to Kristie at the Missouri Department of Conservation. “In a nutshell, is there a difference between instar and nymph? Google says they are the same thing.”
“I suppose you could say instar and nymph are synonyms but I use the term differently. I think of an instar as a stage in development while I think of a nymph as the animal itself.”
And there you have it.
Look at this guy. When I first saw him on these berries I thought it as a little spider. He dropped from the berry down onto the leaf and I chased him around a little trying to get a good picture of him (cause spiders are always boys). I thought he saw me and had his legs up as he backed away from me and went down over the edge of a leaf. He never flew. I just chased him from leaf to leaf before I lost him.
Now that the picture is on my computer I can see it’s a little bee. The f’s on the wings are what I thought were spider legs. I Googled it and found out that it’s not a bee either, it’s actually a fly. And he even has a name. He is called an apple maggot. Not a very nice name for a fly, do you think? But that’s what he is.
“How could you not tell the difference between a spider and a fly?” you ask.
Well, these berries are little and just to show you how little, I went back out and took another picture for you.
And that fly was just a moving spot on the berry! Plus I was looking through the view finder of my camera. Plus plus I have old eyes.
The asters are blooming.
This is a white cabbage moth, but it’s not a moth. It’s a butterfly.
I’m not so crazy about the tons of goldenrod I have around here but the bees certainly like it!
A garden spider. You can tell because of the zigzags in the web. Believe it or not, these zigzags have a name. A design in a web, no matter what the design is, is called a stabilimenta. It’s function is not clear but there are several theories. It could be camouflage for the spider lurking in the center; it may attract insect prey or maybe it warns birds of the hard-to-see web.
This fuzzy caterpillar is a milkweed tussock moth.
Eggs!
Perfect little crystal clear orbs. Sticky too! I am not sure what they will be when they grow up but I suspect they will be slugs. I didn’t save them.
Wholly aphids live in Pennsylvania too!
A spangled fritillary on a thistle.
The asters are blooming.
And so are the spotted touch-me-nots!
Oh yeah, I already showed you them. The problem is I’ve been photographing them for the past three weeks and not showing you all the pretty pictures I’ve been taking.
Our pond has gotten enough water in it for the spadderdock to bloom and the frogs to emerge from wherever they go when there isn’t enough water in the pond.
Someone told us that if our pond is not holding water anymore it’s because of muskrats and we need to kill them. I’ve never seen any and won’t they leave when there’s no water? And how do you fix it after they’re gone?
Hmmm. I’m having the same problem with loosestrife that I had with asters and touch-me-nots — I’ve been photographing them for weeks! And I can’t decide on one picture to show you so here’s two.
I thought this was an interesting moth. I have no clue what it might be even though I’ve Googled it.
Have you had enough of pretty pictures?
How about a little bit of news?
We put an addition on the barn. It wasn’t quite big enough for the RV to get in out of the weather so Mike added sixteen feet on the front of it. Our budget won’t allow us to have the overhead doors installed yet, but that is on our wish list.
Question:
How do you keep a two-hundred-twenty pound man from moving?
Answer:
Have a fourteen ounce kitten fall asleep on him.
Just kidding. Sort of.
Mike has a huge heart for our animals and Smudge has been adopted into the household clan.
Yep. You heard me right. Smudge is now an indoor kitten and he is doing fantabulous! He’s put on weight faster than he was doing when he was outside and that’s because of me. When he cries, I feed him. I’ve weaned him from a bottle. Smudge had gotten to the point where he was doing more chewing than sucking so when the opened carton of kitten milk was gone, I didn’t open anymore. The next step is going to be getting him off the canned stuff. I have a small dish of hard kitten food available to him at all times but he really likes the canned cat food. Not only is it more expensive but it’s also bad for his teeth.
I was worried that he wouldn’t understand that he HAD to use a litter box EVERY time and not some out of the way corner but over the course of this past week, I’ve not found one mess on the floor.
The first few days he was in the house I kept him in a cat carrier if I wasn’t watching him. I showed him where the big boy boxes were and a few times after playing for a while or eating, I put him in the box and he used it. I let him climb out on his own and rejoin us.
After the first couple of few days I let Smudge stay out longer and longer and pretty soon I saw him go into the carrier and use his litter pan. And now the only time I confine him to the carrier is at night and I think I won’t be doing that for much longer either.
Moving indoors was an adjustment for Smudge because he didn’t have anyone to play with. Ginger and Itsy just don’t know how to play with a kitten although Ginger is trying to figure it out. So several times that first week I took Smudge out to spend time with Cleo, his littermate. And sunshine. All the critters need time in the sun.
Cleo is doing really well. She holds her own against the bigger kittens when it comes to feeding times. Again, I have hard food available to them all the time but the Kipp’s bring all the cats canned food in the mornings and I give them canned food at night as a bedtime snack.
The older kittens play with Cleo and take turns staying with her through the day. Most times it’s Spitfire, as evidenced by this picture of the two of them, but some mornings it’s Rascal and even Feisty, the only female of that litter, takes her turn babysitting Cleo. Very rarely will I see that Cleo is left on her own.
And with that, we will call this one done.
No comments:
Post a Comment