Randomosity:
Hey!
Since I have forsworn sparrow ID's...
This may or may not be a towhee.
This may or may not be a song sparrow.
The temperature here got up to the low 60's, maybe.
The activity at the feeders was definitely stepped up. I need one of those Nyjer feeders that has 24 ports. Hellooooo, Cheap Husband? Christmas is just around the corner!
While on a nature walk today, this fly landed on my knee. It was cold enough for the fly to be in a bit of a stupor. Check the junk this guy has in the trunk!
Eeek. Either that's a stinger or it just has really big hips.
This was a fun find. Walking back to my car, I saw this gorgeous bug standing in the grass. I stopped to take a picture and then saw about 30 more scattered around. Some were even mating. Hello? Do they not know it's October?
Darkling beetle...Alobates pennsylvanicus.
Now. All you smarty-pants. Challenge me on that one!
My kind of trucking company.
My daughter can read.
She read a book to us last night. It has been unnervingly easy for her to pick up. Well, she did come from two early readers. Geoff and I both were reading simple sentences at age 3. Yes, that was a brag.
Someone needs to straighten the lamp.
8 comments:
Eee! Eee! Eee!
Oil beetle, or Blister beetle, Meloe impressus. A real sign of autumn in Ohio. The blue-black coloration and very short wing covers over a swollen abdomen are diagnostic. If you annoy it it will ooze yellow caustic juice from its joints, hence the name. It gets weirder. Larvae hitch rides on bees visiting flowers, get into the nesting chamber, eat all the food the bee meant for its young, and then eat the bee larva, too!
Eee! Eee! Eee! You've been chimped!
Shit.
I can't win.
I give up. No more blogging.
Don't give up! Whatever would I do up here in the frozen north? What a prospect.
Oh and the lamp, no biggie, someone needs to straighten my whole house!
How to avoid being chimped: Put up photos of gorgeous horses. Julie goes all ga-ga, and doesn't try to distinguish the various European warmblood species. I'll bet I could tell her a Holsteiner was a Trakehner or an Oldenburg and she wouldn't argue. [tee-hee]
And here I was all ready to believe your ID of the beetle. I just got Kenn Kaufman's insect guide, but I can barely tell an ant from a grasshopper. Beetles are the insect equivalent of shorebirds to me: there are ladybugs and everything else.
Oooh, just looked up the blister beetles. As well as oozing caustic fluid (yuck) they go through a "hypermetamorphosis" starting adult life as a "sleek, host-finding missile" and then turning into a "plump couch potato" after finding a host. Sounds like me!
Blister beetles are also candidates for Toxicology Tuesday, as they can be poisonous to horses if too many get crimped and baled into the hay. Cantharidin is comparable to cyanide and strychnine in toxicity.
~Kathi, coming full circle and concluding now
Neener- neener! You've been chimped!!
I've never seen a Towhee.
Your lamp looks fine if you just tip your head.
At least you know a towhee when you see one. LOL!
Lighten up, Francis! Your batting average is way high anyway. Being chimped is fun, especially when you least expect it!
Cute pic of Geoff and the girls. Reading was always the last thing to do before "lights out!"
Oh and YEA! and Huzzah to Isabelle for the cool accomplishment. Now she will NEVER be bored!
Your daughter can read! This is so exciting! Yay!
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