The deer walk all around here, at dusk and dawn, and at night we turn on the electric fence to keep them out of the garden. To save electricity, we turn it off in the daytime. Lately, though, the deer have been out in the open all morning long. They learn about the garden at a very early age.
We've been watching a robin's nest in the basswood tree by the woodshed, the same structure that was recently the home of a phoebe family. Like the voracious phoebe nestlings, the four little robins have grown very fast.
There's quite an increase in feathers between the first two and the last two nestling photos, and the last photo shows the mother robin watching the photo session with concern. I hadn't noticed until our recent visit from a Wood Thrush how much alike the birds are built.
Emma Bell Miles, in Our Southern Birds (1919), contrasts the song of the American Robin with the Wood Thrush:
What an active, gladsome, vigorous fellow [the Robin] is, and how clearly and fully he expresses all his feelings in his various notes. No refinement of musical culture, such as graces his kinsmen the Thrushes, belongs to him, no elegance of gentle manners; we might say that the Wood Thrush is a violinist to whose recitals we listen in admiration, and Robin is a fiddler to whose jolly strains we may dance with glee. His notes ring with positive gladness; his every motion is decided and free, his bearing alert and open; his presence dominates the lawn or orchard.
Mrs. Miles wrote this book as she lay dying in a tuberculosis sanitarium for the indigent. She intended it to be used by teachers in southern schools, and hoped that its sale would provide for her young children after her death. I don't think either of these intentions came to pass, but the project must surely have brightened her thoughts.
Usually, when you look off the point of our ridge, you see another end of Droop Mountain, but Monday afternoon, these impressive thunderheads rose off the Greenbrier River as we watched. I've never seen anything quite like it here.
Why should you let sleeping cats lie? When they wake up, they can be...menacing.
In addition to Dogbane Beetle and Sehirus cinctus, a burrower bug, the Indian Hemp in the yard also plays host to the Milkweed Bugs, Oncopeltus fasciatus. They are big (~2 cm), colorful heteropterans, easy to raise up from "pups" on milkweed seeds. This has made them favorites among amateur naturalists, kids, and insect physiologists.
I found several of these pretty little cydnids, Sehirus cinctus, on Indian hemp, Apocynum cannabinum, on the point of our ridge. They're small (around 5 mm), and shiny black, making natural light photography a challenge. They're fairly common, and a string search shows they are popular creatures on the Internet. There are many on-line articles and pdf "reprints" available on their behavior and chemistry. Here are a couple of photo-rich html links:
Although the Luna Moth on last week's laundry was easier to photograph, I was equally excited to see this little Geocoris, a tiny, predaceous heteropteran. About 4 mm long, he was fast-moving and hard to photograph, and he didn't stay long.
Bigeyed bugs, Geocoris spp., are among the most abundant and important predaceous insects in many cropping systems in the U.S. There are approximately 19 species that inhabit North America. Of these, G. punctipes and G. pallens are the most common. Geocoris spp. are known to feed on plants, however they rarely cause economic damage.
The most abundant big-eyed bug in Florida and the southeastern United States is G. punctipes (Say). McGregor and McDonough (1917) reported the life history of G. punctipes at Batesburg, South Carolina, finding the average development time from egg to adult was 30 days. Nymphs consumed an average of 47 mites, and adults an average of 83 "red spider" mites on cotton per day. York (1944) reported that adult Geocoris required either free moisture or plant moisture as well as insect prey. Sweet (1960) found that Geocoris adults can survive on sunflower seeds and water, without insect food.
I was poking around, looking for the context of J. B. S. Haldane's quote about beetles, and discovered, on Wikiquote.org, that it is apocryphal. Haldane's quote is often expressed thus: The Creator, if He exists, has "an inordinate fondness for beetles." Now, it seems to me that fondness for the species-rich insect order Coleoptera could never be inordinate. Look at these gaudy chrysomelid beetles, possibly Dogbane Beetles, Chrysochus auratus. Who could help but be fond of them?
In my searches I also found a website called An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles, and a theological speculation on The Real Reason for the Fall. This dialogue suggests we might still be in Paradise if Adam and Eve had shown a bit more interest in the details of Creation.
God: And here's the next species, one I'm particularly proud of...
Adam: Beetle.
God: Excellent. Now here's another...
Adam: Beetle.
God: No, you just named the last one "beetle". This one is quite
different -- look at the pattern on the wing cases, and the shape
of the antennae...
Adam: Beetle.
God: Well, OK, though they certainly look different to Me. Now, the
next species is --
Adam: Beetle.
(credits: Ken Cox)
There are many advantages to hanging the laundry on the clothesline--it saves energy, the sun has a bleaching effect on white fabric, and your clothes have that "outdoor fresh smell" made famous by fabric softener commercials. The best thing, though, is that the clothesline is a perfect way to meet wildlife. This Luna Moth emerged from its cocoon and chose these drying jeans to climb on and inflate its wings with haemolymph. It stayed there all afternoon, until I moved it to the locust clothesline post--after all, the clothes were dry, and so were its wings. It eventually flew, like a bird, into the cherry tree, and later visited me at the porch light.
Earlier this month, I posted a photo of the Garden Flea Hopper, a tiny mirid that attacks seedlings of all sorts. Today's photo shows a flea beetle (probably the striped flea beetle mentioned below), which is also tiny, also hops, and also damages seedlings in the garden. Some years, these critters kill off my tomato and cabbage seedlings as soon as I set them out, but this year, they haven't been so bad, and now, their season is just about over. Here are a few flea beetle links.
Description: "Flea beetle" is a generic name applied to many species of small jumping beetles commonly seen early in the gardening season. Some species are general feeders while others have a more restricted host range. All flea beetle life stages are completed underground. Only the adults are commonly seen by gardeners and vegetable producers.
Flea beetles may be somewhat elongate to oval in shape, and vary in color, pattern, and size. For instance, potato flea beetles (Epitrix cucumeris) tend to be more oval, blackish, and about 1/16 inch long.
Striped flea beetles (Phyllotreta striolata) are more elongate and dark with yellowish crooked stripes, and measure about 1/12 inch long.
Last week's sewing projects--both ladies' and men's tee shirts. Now that I have the patterns adjusted, it's quick work to sew up a few.
Every spring, little mirids work over my butterfly bush, sucking juice out of the tender new leaves as they expand. Lopidea and Halticus species usually hit it, and this pretty bug, Poecilocapsus lineatus is all over it as well. This year, our April cold snap knocked back the populations of these early garden pests, but they're still here in reduced numbers.
The Poecilocapsus nymphs are pretty, too, although I find their color incongruous with the adults.
I had a wonderful time at the Maury River Fiddler's Convention in Buena Vista, Virginia over the weekend. I got to play the concertina quite a bit, and I thought it was working pretty well with the string band instruments. I noticed this box in the trash there, though, and it puzzled me. "Generation 7 Fries Concertina Frozen Potatoes." Are they Concertina-Frozen potatoes or Concertina-Potatoes, sold frozen?
The phoebe babies are growing fast, but are still in the nest, expecting to be fed. After my controversial comment about Wood Thrush song last month, I hunted down a few bird call resources on the Web. Here are the ones I found most usable.
Over the weekend, we went to Virginia for the Maury River Fiddler's Convention. It's fun to go to festivals, but it's also very nice to come home to Droop Mountain.
On a cool, foggy morning, the previous night's porch light fauna is easy to approach closely.
I saw this pretty narrow-winged damselfly in the grass a few days ago. Dragonflies and damselflies are much beloved insects, the North American fauna has relatively few species (compared to beetles or leafhoppers or moths), and the insects themselves are large enough to be identified without magnification. That's why I wasn't surprised to find lots of Internet resources for their identification, including two checklists to odonate fauna of West Virginia. Wildlife photographer Stephen Cresswell has a Checklist of the Damselflies of West Virginia that links to his own photographs of most of the listed species, and the USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center's Odonata of West Virginia includes county distribution maps for each species. I don't have the insect in hand, so I won't offer an identification, but this damselfly looks much like the genus whose common name is "dancer."
A pair of phoebes start a nest on or about our woodshed every spring, but every year, Princess has persuaded them to give up the adventure--until this year. This phoebe, the female, I think, has a small grasshopper, which she is about to take into the shed.
The well-fed nestlings are almost too big for their bed, and must flop over the sides to nap. In April, we also hear wood peewees around the house. They look very much like phoebes, and we have spent a lot of time trying to decide who is who. The nest is the clincher, but this close look is helpful too. The phoebe, of course, has a good look at us, as well.
I interrupted these two tater bugs in the act of making more tater bugs on a solenaceous weed (some sort of Physalis, I think) last week. I've found several adults in the yard recently, although our taters are just coming up now. I should be more specific--Colorado Potato Beetles are one of several insects known as "tater bugs," but for me they are the true tater bug type. While they haven't yet attacked our small potatoes, I've picked some adults and eggs off our Hillbilly tomatoes, a variety described as a "potato-leaf tomato." They haven't bothered the other tomato varieties, leading me to believe that tater bugs read the fine print on seed packets.
When I was a kid, my parents subscribed to the opinion offered by the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture "Colorado Potato Beetle Management" fact sheet:
Other non-chemical control measures such as hand picking of adult beetles and immature stages is encouraged as this will aid to delay the development of resistance. Hand picking can be particularly effective in reducing the numbers of overwintering beetles coming to the young plants in the spring.As a small child with nothing better (by adult standards) to do, I spent quality time in the garden, picking these chunky chrysomelid beetles off potato plants and dropping them in a can with some kerosene in the bottom. (Soapy water works well, too, and is probably better for the younger set.) That's the origin of my fascination. The dark spots on the pronotum (that's the brown band behind the head) are variable from individual to individual, and some of them look like letters. I used to study the tater bugs, trying to spell out the message encoded in their heiroglyphs.
In the side view, you can see why the old-fashioned, arch-back mandolins are called "tater bugs" in these parts.
More from the Friday night porch light session: This sphinx moth would normally have been the star of the show, if not for the huge Polyphemus moth. Although I poked and prodded it, and crawled around on the rain-soaked porch, I was unable to persuade this sphingid to show its hindwings, or angle about so I could catch its vivid red eye-shine with the camera flash. Still, it's a big, elegant moth, in rich shades of brown.