Fairy Tale Life

Without even going outside today I felt that I was surrounded by wildlife. Looking out my window at the rock garden, I saw a tufted titmouse having a drink of water from the bird bath. Then I saw a chipmunk scampering through the foliage, no doubt looking for acorns that have bounced across the driveway and landed there. Then there was a flock of robins searching through the greenery for something to eat; since they eat insects, and there are myriad insects that live among the ground cover in the rock garden, it must have been a feast. Then a woodpecker swooped by–and this part I don't like–started pecking on the house.

I got my camera and changed the lens from the macro to the telephoto to try to get pictures of all of this frolicking and feeding. I never get good pictures through the window, but if I had gone outside, all of these animals would have skedaddled. As it is, they mostly moved to the driveway. But that was when I realized that there were at least three chipmunks out there. There is only one oak tree in my yard that has produced a notable number of acorns. One of them (and really, I don't know every oak tree in my yard, especially now that my yard has expanded) has a few acorns, and another does not appear to have produced any at all. So the one next to the driveway has provided the food for the chipmunks.

They were all in quite a frenzy to collect acorns:

 Look for it...

Chipmunks have been pretty scarce the last couple of years. After they had a population boom when we had a huge bumper crop of acorns coupled with a mild winter, there was a population crash when the next couple of years there were very few acorns. I haven't seen many this year, although lately they are becoming at least more noticeable. I wonder how this weird acorn situation will affect them this year.

 The feeling of being surrounded by friendly, little forest creatures continued when I changed back to my macro lens and went out the back door to look for bugs. I felt like Cinderella, except none of the animals spoke to me or sewed me a ballgown. There was a squirrel furtively leaping through the grass. There was a flock of yellow shafted flickers among the trees–and I have never seen a flock of yellow shafted flickers. A bluejay squawked as it flew away. And there was the chorus of crickets, restored to full strength and enthusiasm. This is the time of year for eating everything you can and storing up whatever you can't for later. There are nuts and berries to eat, along with seeds of many trees and flowers. Harvest time in the woods.

Speaking of eating seeds, here is Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Small milkweed bug. They feed on the seeds of milkweed plants, sucking nutrients out of them. I have never heard whether this damages the viability of the seeds, but I do wonder about it.

There aren't many Other Bugs:

 Candy striped leaf hopper

Mostly today I saw Hymenoptera, the same recent abundance of bumblebees (which I didn't get any good picture of today, but you're probably tired of seeing them every day here), but other bees and wasps, too, some of which I was able to photograph:

 Potters wasp, I think

 This might be a paper wasp.

 

 Thread-waisted wasp. The autumn colors are on display here.

 Sweat bee

Milkweed bug nymphs:

 They are still not far enough along for me to know which species these are.

 I found this cricket on my shoulder.

 Earwig

 Leaf hoppers

Arachnid Appreciation:
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Marbled orb weaver. Its web was looking a bit shabby today, and the night is quite mild, so I thought maybe it would finally be possible for me to see this outside of its bower, building a web. I went out to look at around 11:30 p.m., ant it was out, and appeared to have just finished demolishing the old web. It had not started on the new one. It didn't like having its picture taken, though, so it eventually moved back into its bower, so I went inside so it would not be disturbed anymore and could get on with building. At least I got this nice look at it.