What's in a name?

Names can be a nuisance. They either get it right or get it wrong. And sometimes they correct a misnomer...

Eastern Tent Caterpillar:

This is the variety found in the eastern US (yes, there's a western species) and they are not only social caterpillars, they build a three-dimensional triangular web--aka, tent--in the fork of a branch of their food plant and retreat into it for safety (and possibly for temperature regulation).

Forest Tent Caterpillar:

Okay, looks a bit like an Eastern Tent, but this one is predominately blue. Taxonomically, these two are cousins, both assigned the genus Malacosoma. Forest tent caterpillars, like Eastern, are also social, in that they hang out together with their siblings on their preferred tree when they aren't eating. (Many moth caterpillars are gregarious; butterfly caterpillars tend to be loners.) Forest Tent caterpillars do not, however, form tents…

Juniper Hairstreak:

This stunning little (it's maybe an inch long if it stretches its wings) butterfly's caterpillars feed on red cedar trees. Which aren't really cedars… They're, well, junipers.

A rose is a rose is a rose and by any other name… Gosh, I sure hope so.

Seed Dispersal.

The continuing saga of a Dandelion...

How do you get your offspring out into the world if you are a living being rooted in the ground? Why, you send out your seeds on built-in parachutes, of course! (Click on any photo to big-ify them.)

Take a deep breath...

And make a wish.

They come in purple, too.

Instead of the original red. (They look even better big-ified: Click on any photo.)

The domestic cat...

"Is by nature a solitary creature."

Unless a comfy chair, cozy blankets and a chilly house are involved.

(Sometimes they even let me sit in the chair. Only with adequate accompaniment, of course.)

Red and native! (Sort of.)

Columbine. Growing only in containers, and the original plants came from containers, so I'm unsure of their provenance as truly "wild" but they are probably closer to the parent variety than most of the flowers in my yard...

Like A Duck to Water.

A local mooch of a mallard hen spent an afternoon napping in one of the bird baths at work. (Never mind the large lake across the street...) Of course I had to take her picture!

She wasn't too happy with me pointing a camera at her,

but I caught one last departing shot...

And I made sure to get a close up...

Spring Blues.

Hmm, why are so many of my spring flower photos in shades of blue...? Here, a dwarf columbine (a tiny plant with full-sized flowers), "wild" violet (that only exists in my planters, but is very happy there, away from grazing deer [mostly--one pot did lose a third of its plants to a long-legged muncher before I inadvertently chased the doe out of the "garden" by walking out my front door last summer) and Forget Me Not (a small plant with even smaller wee tiny flowers).

(Love a columbine's jester cap.)

Bizarre Bee Fly Behavior, cont.

So I went back to check on the torpid bee flies of the previous post later that afternoon... It had "warmed up" to all of 54°F but was still overcast, windy and damp. The fly on the thorn stem hadn't moved, but the one on the tall grass had moved around 180° to the other side of the stem. (I did not merely flip the photo, honest!)

The chance to take more photographs allowed me to notice that what I had believed were barbs on the fly's proboscis were really its antennae!

Same fly, nearly the same photo, but with natural light. I don't like using flash, but sometimes macro photography demands it. (Especially when the photographer is still learning how to work her camera out of "automatic everything" mode...)

I have a guess as to why just this one was encouraged to move; note the two new residents that had appeared at the top of the grass stem... Goodness knows, ticks make me wiggle.

Pay Attention.

Now, I'm not the most observant person in the world… Door frames still occasionally give me trouble, and just this past week I nearly impaled my forehead on a branch of a tree I was trimming. (It's ok, the scar won't show.) But sometimes things do jump out at me.

The trick to finding something unusual is to become familiar with the, well, familiar. When you know what is supposed to be there, the out of place will stand out.

This was demonstrated to me most vividly this morning. Our refuse and recycling collectors have been coming at a ridiculous (to me) hour of the morning recently. I mean, I am a morning person and I'm up, but not necessarily out (especially not as I get older) at the break of dawn. So I was a good girl, got my butt in gear early and hauled everything out to the curb. Early. (I live in a rural area but on a main highway; putting out the garbage and recyclables the evening before is not a good idea. You really don't want raccoons, trash, bottles and/or garbage cans scattered across a blind curve…) As I was already up and out, I changed out the hummingbird feeders as well. I decided to add a feeder to a window that hadn't had one, and as I walked around the corner of the house, the top of a dried sprig of grass caught my eye as being not quite right. Wrong color, wrong pattern, wrong texture. I took a closer look and when I realized what I saw, I did my so-glad-I-live-alone-and-away-from-neighbors chortling, mumbling, gleeful cackling. Mostly it was repeatedly chanting "must get the camera must get the camera must get the camera"...

Bizarre bee fly death ritual???

I thought perhaps this was just a one-off, but as I was taking photos, I found another one!

As it was a typical Cape May spring day--a breezy, damp and chill 44° (hey, at least we made it above freezing for the first time in days)--I'm assuming this is just what bee flies do when it's too cold for critters with no internal thermoregulation mechanisms who have misjudged the arrival of Spring.

I'm assuming they are alive--I didn't want to warm either one up to make sure, as the weather continues to go downhill as the day goes by.

Oh, and the trash collectors? They hadn't made it 'round when I left the house at 9am.