Somewhere Over the Rainbow
It is a terrible comparison, rainbows to snakes, but they both are silent in their appearance; and no matter how many times you see one above or below, it startles you when suddenly there they are right in front of you.…
Tag Flora and Fauna
Nature Notes 10 March 2014
From the road, just a couple of creature features from the recent web archives. [su_heading]Virus Back From the Grave — yet another plot line for a SF writer.[/su_heading] “Scientists at a laboratory in France have thawed out and revived an…
Doin’ It When it Don’t Fit
Forgive me the incorrect grammar and the suggestive title. The phrase just seems to, well, mate with the mood of the moment. You see I am cooking in somebody elses kitchen, going on a week. The MacPro is in the…
O Sting–Where is Thy Death?
This reversal of a Biblical verse (for the throngs no long familiar with that volume) is the word play by Tim Flannery, author of this NYT long-read about jellyfish called They’re Taking Over. The piece consists largely of a review…
Egg-Suckin’ Snake in the Grass
Our hens are giving us NO eggs lately but I discovered one of them nestled in the weeds on a well-concealed nest behind the garden mid-day and was sure I’d find at least one egg there later in the evening.…
God’s Monstrosity: the Ichneumonid Wasp
My apologies: this is one of the most interesting bad photographs I’ve ever taken–a female ichneumonid wasp using her 4″ ovipositor to lay an egg deep inside a piece of our firewood. Unfortunately, it found her in action at 8:30…
We Brake for Butterflies
I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many congregations of swallowtails on our road at one time. The image above shows only part of one patch, and there were watering holes all up and down the lane from barn to…
Biota of the Blue Ridge: Oil Beetle
If you look in Google Images for this flightless creature that looks like an obese steel-blue ant, you’ll not find another picture among the many of this insect in a human hand–like the one you see here perched on my…
Flight of the Carpenter Bee
Maybe I’m crazy. I know there are times SHE thinks so, when so many chores must be done, and all of them call out to be done first. What does HE do? Runs inside to grab his camera, on a…