I noticed this pair of caterpillars taking on what looked like a ritual stance on a roadside weed during my walk today. I was reminded of Tai Chi, or perhaps Yoga. The two remained perfectly motionless while I took this photograph and several other ones. I am not sure why this particular pose is favored; perhaps it helps the caterpillars look more like twigs and less like dinner.
Today I encountered one of the most gaudy, clown-like of all the unusual insects I have seen along Piney Woods Church Road. When first I saw it among the branches of a roadside weed, it had its proboscis down, and looked like it was feeding on the juices of the plant. I assumed it was a harmless, brightly-colored herbivore of some kind. When I zoomed in on the digital image, though, I discovered that it was actually feeding on some sort of insect larva, possibly a tiny caterpillar. After inadvertently interrupting its breakfast, the insect began wandering the plant, and I embarked on a micro-safari, photographing it as it did so. After a few minutes of this, I continued on my way. Returning to the same weed twenty minutes later, I found it again an a different branch, and photographed it yet again.
I suspected that a bug so non-conventionally attired would be easy to find in an online search. Indeed, all it took was “bug black and white striped legs” to retrieve dozens of other images of it. The insect is almost certainly an Orange Assassin Bug nymph, Pselliopus barberi. In keeping with the account of this bug in the National Wildlife Federation’s Guide to Insects and Spiders of North America, it was occupying an open habitat near a woodland edge. “They are active from late spring through fall, when they hunt for insects during the day on shrubs and herbaceous undergrowth.” In the middle photo, the Orange Assassin Bug appears to be stalking a small aphid near the bottom of the image, having had its breakfast (top photo) so rudely interrupted by a nosy photographer.
Today marks at once both the 250th day of the Piney Woods Church Project and, by sheer happenstance, the 500th post on the Commonplace Nature blog. I confess that I felt a great burden as I set off on a morning ramble down the road today; what could I possibly find that would justify the status of 250th day and 500th post? What new image could even attempt to capture the journey I have taken this year, the wonders I have encountered on a seemingly nondescript bit of gravel track? I did see (and photograph) an insect I had not previously encountered, which will become post 501. But it was only when I returned to the intersection with Rico Rd. that I at last saw my muse: a pair of broken eyeglasses, attached to a stop sign post. I noticed them for the first time; ironically, in talking later with my wife, I learned that they had been hanging there for a couple of months. Walking the dogs one day, she had found them in the dirt, scuffed up and one lens missing, and had put them there for the owner, perhaps, to find. She hadn’t noticed them since, and neither had I. Until now.
The road has become my eyeglasses. I put them on when I reach the intersection with Rico Road, wear them gladly as I make my way to Hutcheson Ferry Road, and take them off again as I turn back at last onto Rico Road for the short stroll home. In-between, I encounter seemingly endless visions and wonders through their gravel frames. It is not all bouncing bunnies and frolicking calves — though I have seen those, too. There is also predation and death. There are moments of stillness, contained within drops of water or suspended from spiders’ threads. There are encounters with the unknown — insects unlike anything I have seen before, blossoms of flowers I have hurried home to identify in my field guides. The Sun illuminates leaves, which blaze in brilliant shades of yellow-green and orange-red. There is still a sense of wonder about what might await me around the next bend.
One-hundred-fifteen days to go. I begin to plan my next journey, one that will embrace all of Chattahoochee Hills. And, meanwhile, I continue my apprenticeship as a Dirt Road Pilgrim.
On Day 249, for Blog Post #499, here is this evening’s photograph of a white calf in a pasture along Piney Woods Church Road. He watched me for a minute or so as I beckoned him to approach. His caution eventually overrode his curiosity, and he hurried off to join the rest of his herd grading placidly beside the road.
It is muscadine season along Piney Woods Church Road, but the grapes are fairly few and mostly out of reach. I suspect that most of them get snatched up by the white-tailed deer, like the pears on my tree usually do — but that is another story.
There were still enough clouds in the sky this evening for some lovely sunset images along Piney Woods Church Road. This one was taken from a grassy field at the Hutcheson Ferry Road end of Rico Road, looking back toward some cedars growing along a fence line.
This evening I set out for Piney Woods Church Road a scant hour before sunset. The air was a bit cooler, though still rather warm and muggy. About halfway down the road, beside what was once a mule barn, I noticed a lean and wary Eastern Cottontail Rabbit (Sylvilagus floridanus). It stood motionless in the grass, probably hoping to escape unnoticed. It was completely alert, ears raised — though not quite “all ears”, as it apparently lost a couple of pieces of one of them in some past mishap. I was able to approach to within eight feet or so of this rabbit before it turned tail and hopped a short distance away. We parted company, and I continued on my walk.
I know, yet another photograph of the Yellow Garden Spider (Argiope aurantia)…. I was on Facebook yesterday, and saw an entire discussion thread loaded with everyone’s photos of this enormous spider. I can understand why, of course — this spider is easily among the most dramatic and photogenic of our orb-weavers. Practically no other spider in the Southeast approaches it in size, and its vivid yellow coloration is quite conspicuous against the greens and browns of a forest edge. Then there is its huge web, with its carefully-stitched “zipper” that helps to prevent wayward birds from crashing into it.
For a slightly different take on Argiope aurantia, I am including photographs of a moderately-sized female I saw along Piney Woods Church Road today, taken both from both the front and the back. Her underside is not quite as visually stunning, but still imposing enough. And this particular one was only an inch and a half across.
This time of year, there are precious few flowers coming into bloom along Piney Woods Church Road. I was elated to encounter diminutive pea-like blossoms in a small gully beside a neighbor’s driveway during my walk earlier this afternoon. I am fairly confident that the quarter-inch blooms belong to Creeping Lespedeza, also known as Smooth Creeping Bush Clover (Lespedeza repens). Like all members of the Pea Family (Fabaceae), this perennial, common to open woods and roadsides throughout the Eastern United States, enhances soil quality by fixing nitrogen. Plus, it adds lovely tiny splashes of pinkish-purple to the roadside that I can enjoy on my daily walks during the hot and humid days of early September in Georgia.
On my way to Atlanta on an errand, almost as an afterthought I stopped at Piney Woods Church Road this morning to take a few photographs. The dew was still heavy on the grass everywhere, and it had rained heavily overnight, too. As is so often the case, I found myself gravitating toward droplets of water. Along the way, I also photographed a pair of reddish-brown leaves (probably pin cherry) at the end of a naked branch. The result is these four photographs, and I simply couldn’t choose one picture among them to single out above the rest. I find delight in the watery marble on a grass blade in the first image; the reflected sunlight in the drop of water on the tip of a sassafras leaf in the second (is that actually a heart I see?); the brilliantly backlit red-brown of the pair of dead leaves against the forest background in the third; and the elegance of the grapevine tendril necklace and with its watery pendant in the fourth. I was blessed four times today, with such moments of stillness and delight.
(As an addendum, I did, in a sense, pay later for my morning. Arriving home from Atlanta with ankles burning, I removed my shoes and socks to find chiggers everywhere! They may have been lodging in my shoes (which I have since run through the washing machine) or they were waiting in the short grass just beside the road this morning to dive onto my feet. Either way, I am beginning to get a bit terrified of the local chigger population this year.)
