Day 223: Keep Calm and Look Like Dung

 Backyard Nature, Insects, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Aug 112014
 

Keep calm and look like dung.  That appears to be the strategy of the Viceroy Caterpillar (Limenitis archippus), here photographed on a pin cherry leaf along Piney Woods Church Road.  When alarmed by the presence of my camera lens, he (or she) even contorted his/her body in a fascinating bit of caterpillar yoga, presumably so to look even more like bird droppings.  Considering that I found four caterpillars thriving on four different leaves of the same sapling, it appears that the strategy may be paying off.

 

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Dogday Cicada

 Backyard Nature, Insects  4 Responses »
Aug 102014
 

Earlier this afternoon, I spotted a large Dogday Cicada (Tibicen canicularis) resting placidly on the railing of my front porch.  I had never had the opportunity to get so close to a live cicada before.  This one did not flinch when I drew my camera up close to its face.  The little reddish dots on its forehead (there are three) are oscelli, primitive “eyes” that detect light.

 

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Day 221: Sweetgum Jewel

 Backyard Nature, Geometry and Nature, Native Plants, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  2 Responses »
Aug 092014
 

I set out on a humid morning, after the fog had lifted and shortly before the heat descended.  After so many dry afternoons I was drawn ineluctably to drops of water, minute suspended temporary worlds.  My favorite photograph is of this single water droplet, hanging from the tip of a sweetgum leaf.

 

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Day 220: The Green Cone-headed Planthopper

 Backyard Nature, Insects, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Aug 082014
 

This small green insect (perhaps a quarter-inch long) with furtive eyes and a body like a leaf is one of my new-found favorites along Piney Woods Church Road.  It is a Cone-headed Planthopper (Acanalonia conica).  A strict vegetarian, it feeds on a wide variety of plants by piercing them and sucking their juices.  This one was not very masterful at evading my camera, though it did try to get away a few times by shifting to the other side of the stem, out of sight and reach.

 

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Day 219: Virgins and Barbed Wire

 Backyard Nature, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Aug 072014
 

In my wandering down Piney Woods Church Road this morning, I inevitably returned to the Sweet Autumn Virginsbower (Clematis terniflora) blooming along a cattle pasture fence.  I suspect I will take quite a few photographs of the flower in different light over the days to come.  For today, my image juxtaposes the delicate, four-petaled white flower with a barb in the fence, a gray blur in the background.

 

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Roadside Melodrama

 Backyard Nature, Natural History, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Aug 062014
 

Another plant came into flower along Piney Woods Church Road, which is a fairly uncommon event at the height of midsummer.  The blooming vine is covered with a profusion of white blossoms with four petals and yellow stigmas (the uppermost portion of the pistil).  It has a delicate beauty though no noticeable fragrance.  I was disappointed to find that it is an invasive species from China or Japan with quite a melodramatic name :  Sweet Autumn Virginsbower (Clematis terniflora).  Originally introduced as an ornamental plant, it is now found throughout the Southeast along forest edges and rights-of-way.  Ah, well.  If I am to be a photographer of dirt road landscapes, I will become familiar indeed with many invasive species on my journeys.

 

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Day 216: Beautiful Stink Bug

 Backyard Nature, Insects, Natural History, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Aug 042014
 

Late this afternoon, along Piney Woods Church Road, I met up with a beautiful bug with a dreadful name.  It is the Rough Stink Bug (Brochymena quadripustulata).  Another insect ID book on my shelf uses the Latin to assign it the common name of Four-blistered Bronchymena, which I suppose is a little better, though it is quite a mouthful and carries the unpleasant image of blisters.  (The Rough Stink Bug, as you can see in the photograph below, has a number of raised orange-red spots, including four on its upper thorax which are responsible for its Latin species name.)  I came across this creature resting on the trunk of a pin cherry tree.  According to one field guide, it dines on the sap of many trees, including cherry, though it occasionally feeds instead on larvae and pupae of other insects.  The other field guide claims instead that it feeds only on “the juices of caterpillars and other soft insects”.  Predatory or no, if I were a caterpillar I would err on the safe side and stay well away from the Rough Stink Bug.

 

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