I encountered this mellow grasshopper while strolling along the new wooden horse fence on Piney Woods Church Road earlier today. He (who certainly might be a she instead) may be another Differential Grasshopper like the one I photographed a couple of weeks back, but I am not certain. He was not at all camera-shy, as you may note.
As autumn proceeds, insect life gets more scarce along Piney Woods Church Road. Lately, I have been craving an encounter with some sort of creature making its rounds along the road. This afternoon, I encountered two: a wasp and a grasshopper (the latter the topic of another post).
I found this bright yellow wasp buzzing along near the ground, moving into and out of the leaf litter. It rested for a moment on a a leaf, but took off quickly when I pointed the camera its way. I waited again for it to make landfall, only for the same thing to happen again. On maybe the fourth try, she perched on a Hoary Mountainmint leaf and stayed put, occupied with grooming her antennae. I took quite a few photographs, most of which ended up a bit blurry. This one did not. According to the BugGuide experts, she is most likely the Ichneumon wasp, Neotheronia septentrionalis.
A Harvestman (Daddy Longlegs) waits patiently in the autumn sunshine on a Hoary Mountainmint leaf along Piney Woods Church Road.
A small late-season bee is hard at work pollinating the goldenrod along Piney Woods Church Road in this image from earlier today.
On a sunny, blue-sky Wednesday afternoon, I returned to one of my favorite subjects along Piney Woods Church Road — strands of horsehair in a barbed wire fence. Here, they catch the light (and breeze) to become flowing, cosmic forms.
An oak leaf is illuminated by the morning sun, somewhere along Piney Woods Church Road.
Asters of an unidentified species (there are simply too many possibilities out there) continue to bloom along the roadside down Piney Woods Church Road.
Until this project, I had never really noticed, much less appreciated, the brilliant red of the sassafras leaves in autumn, accentuated by the way many of the leaves remain green while others abruptly turn.
A black cherry leaf, against blue sky, photographed on my Piney Woods Church Road saunter earlier today….
I ventured out to Piney Woods Church Road shortly after noon today, and photographed this sweetgum leaf partially illuminated by the sun. In its pale green and dun spaces, I imagine a satellite image of another land, containing verdant forests and stark deserts.
