We've been watching nature documentaries in the evening most nights this summer. Partly because they are interesting, and partly because continuing to watch episodes of this program relieves us both of the burden of choosing a movie to watch. So we just decide every night to keep on with David Attenborough, and whatever the theme of the night is. We started with bug documentaries (yay!), then moved on to amphibians, reptiles... Actually, I can't remember them all right now. But we are currently watching a series about life in the Antarctic. I found last night's episode to be extremely dismaying. I am not going to go into details, but there was a lengthy scene involving a penguin and a leopard seal about which I can only say that the weather is not the worst peril of living in the antarctic. Honestly, penguins have to be out of their minds to be living there. I had to look away while the scene played out, while my husband kept saying, "Keep looking away, keep looking away."
Anyway, it was brutal, and I was horrified with this depiction of how cruel nature can be. Not that I didn't already know this. I witness the harshness of nature fairly regularly on a literally small scale in my backyard. I've seen spiders capture prey. I saw a dragonfly eat a moth once - it ate everything but the wings, which it just dropped on the ground before flying away. Last summer I filmed a praying mantis eating a caterpillar, and if you want cruel nature, let me just say that praying mantises don't kill their prey before they eat it. And they start in the middle. I've seen it with birds, too - a nest full of eggs or even babies one day, and empty the next. I even once saw a bobcat go after a groundhog. But this is the nature of things - I keep saying it's a bug eat bug world. Eat or be eaten.
However, I was feeling pretty disgusted with nature last night, and its wanton cruelty, but today I went outside to do my bug walk, and I couldn't help but fall in love with it again. Because there is so much that is wondrous in nature, too, and I have seen a lot more that is beautiful than cruel.
So, what restored my affection and respect for nature?
Backyard Bug of the Day:
This is a lace bug.
This is a side view of a lace bug.
This is an out of focus front view of a lace bug.
This is... well, a weird angle of a lace bug.
This is an adult lace bug and two younger lacebugs on a leaf.
This is the same three bugs, with a closer look. The younger lace bugs may look familiar to you if you have been reading the blog for a while, because they have been Backyard Bug of the Day. I found a whole bunch of them on a leaf, three different sizes/levels of development. I thought they were immature versions of something, maybe a tortoise beetle, but I didn't really know. Well, two nights ago I was perusing my bug book, and saw not only the adult bug, but a picture of all the young ones on a leaf. Aha!
So, I went out actually looking for the adult ones yesterday. I didn't find them then, in part because from the picture in the book I thought they'd be a lot larger (they are, I would estimate, less than an eighth of an inch long), but today I found them! And that made me happy!
This shot shows an adult, and all three sizes of youngsters. Also a lot of poop - that is what the smallest dots are.
Anyway, maybe it's trite, but the beauty of the lace bug made me feel better.
This also made me feel better:
Do you feel like this caterpillar looks sort of familiar, but not really? This is The Caterpillar, and it has turned brown, because it is about to pupate! It was like this when I came downstairs this morning (I just went out and got it fresh food last night, and said to my husband, "Watch, it is going to pupate now and not eat any of this food. And thus is happened. Watch, we're going to win the lottery... Ha!).
Later it looked browner... It's kind of interesting that this caterpillar starts out brown and white, changes to green, and then turns back to brown. It still has its blue spots, though.
We then went out for the day, and when we came back in the evening it was a darker brown - if you compare with the other pictures, it was still quite greenish earlier in the day. It had also left its leaf and crawled to the top of the cage to find a place to pupate. I put a bunch of sticks in the cage to give it something to pupate on, because I read that they pupate on the trunks of trees, and was led to believe they like a vertical surface. So what does it do? Ignore the sticks and go to the horizontal surface at the top of the cage - and in the worst place, right in the front, kind of behind the frame. To take this picture I had to stick the camera inside and point it in that direction and hope for the best from auto-focus. I took at least 20 shots, none of them good, most of them horrible...
You can see here the silk pad it made to hold onto when it begins to pupate. With monarchs it jabs a spiked rod that was inside its backside into the silk pad, but I don't know how tiger swallowtails do it.
Hiding behind the frame. This is unfortunate when it comes to wanting to watch things like eclosure.
I assume it will make its chrysalis tomorrow. I will be out most of the day, unfortunately. Watching the monarch butterflies make there chrysalides two years ago was fascinating, and I would love to compare the process. That one was very quick (after a lot of hanging upside down), so I want to know it this is, too.
Backyard Bud of the Day:
Queen Anne's lace.
I confess this did not add to my happiness, because I am allergic to it. It is pretty though.
This made me happy, however:
It is not just because they are beautiful that I love purple coneflowers. It is also because they are bug magnets. This one is awkwardly located under the low branch of a tree, so it might not be a great photography site, but I am happy that the deer didn't eat them all!
Yet.
I saw a beautiful wasp today, too:
Purple wings! And I love the shadow, too.
Lots of weird hoppers today:
I wasn't sure what this was at first...
And then it lifted its backside up to secrete that droplet... So this one was sitting in a little fuzzy nest.
It's only after it moved I saw the eye.
One last thing that cheered me up:
There are plants - mostly grass, but some flowers - that grow in a crack between the street and the curb. Last week they chip sealed our street, which means they covered it with tar and put gravel on top. It's annoying, because they gravel is loose until the passing of cars pushes it down into the tar and it sticks, and we live on a dead end street that doesn't get a lot of cars on it, so the gravel is taking a long time to stick down. More to the point here, though, is that the plants by the curb were obviously not spared from the tarring. And yet, they grow. Seeing the perseverance of nature was inspiring for me.
But I still think the penguins are crazy for living in Antarctica.
Now for some appreciation for tiny predators in nature, Arachnid Appreciation:
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment