Small moments

Late summer drones on for me...the girls are back to school, but the bird action (now that I have some time to get out and watch them) is still quiet.  Babies are grown, the fall exodus not yet begun....

I take what I can get, though.  Small moments of magic. 



I found a flower whose stamens are minuscule Pixie Stix.

(Please click on this to see it larger...)


Glowing Morning Glory.




Did not know an inchworm was also noodling his way through the thistle blooms alongside the skipper.
(This skipper was the size of a quarter.)





A delicate, tiny white flower in the underbrush...



So small and fragile-looking, I held my breath as I took its picture.



Watched water striders' shadows chase them under the water.



I found water so clear, it held the sky inside.



Just the right patch of shade gave me a star.



Stumbled across a bird finally, a solitary sandpiper eating a small fish.



A small moment that was huge for me....
I've always wanted to see this.  A damselfly freshly emerged from its nymph skin. 



Zero defining marks.  Just opalescent translucence.

I've never held a dragonfly or damselfly.  They are too smart, too fast for that.  I've always wanted to, but never had the chance.

And then he climbed onto my fingernail. 

Mammoth BUGS

So. We're back from Mammoth Cave, KY.
Did we see lots of birds? Nope. (A pair of bluebirds was my best bird moment)
Did we see lots of bugs? Oh, yeah.

It was hot and humid in eastern Kentucky this weekend. With no AC in my car, we are fairly moldy by now. And the hotter it got, the louder the cicadas yelled. Brood XIV has emerged here at home and apparently in Kentucky, too. Everywhere we went, there were cicadas; young ones just emerging from the ground, teenager ones emerging from their old skins, randy adult ones singing their ugly butts off, almost dead ones twitching on the sidewalks, and fully dead ones no longer twitching on the sidewalks.

This morning, as we were checking out of the hotel, a luna moth greeted us.

"Good morning. We hope you enjoyed your stay. Please come again."


Is there a more fantastic moth, anywhere?
Poor guy lost an antenna somehow.

While waiting to go down into the caves for a second tour, this guy was flitting about, and I got him to light on my fingers:

I thought it was a hackberry emperor, but it's not matching any pictures I can find. Who knows what this is? Speak now!

The caves we walked today are at the "wet" end of the cave system (which is the longest cave system in the world, by the way) and thanks to all that water over millions of years, the cave is festooned with glorious stalagmites and stalactites, soda straws, cave drapery, flowstone, and Frozen Niagara, a mass of formations that cascade down from one room of the cave into another.

Mammoth Cave has a sandstone cap that protects most of the system from water wanting to flow into the Green River, but where the cap ends, the formations begin.
The girls were so very unimpressed with all of the information we were getting from the ranger. But I loved it all.

Though there was a very large,unsettling hole in the ceiling. I was afraid to ask about cave-ins.

Many different kinds of critters call the caves home:
Little brown bats
Big brown bats
Gray bats
Eastern pipistrelle bats
Eastern small-footed bats
Cave crickets
Cave salamanders
Blind salamanders
Eyeless cave fish
Cave crayfish
Cave shrimp

While most of the life in the cave was inaccessible to us, we had no shortage of cave crickets. I thought that they were only where the lights were shining (every 20 feet or so) but the ranger started shining his flashlight on the ceiling, we realized that we were surrounded by them.
Thankfully, he saved that bit of info until we were on our way out. I got the creepy-crawlies on my neck as we passed under God-knows-how-many to get back to the outside.

These were mating. How........... cute.

On the way out of the park, I wanted to stop at a pond we saw on the way in.
Boy, am I glad we did, because this was in the parking lot:

A butterfly "bachelor drinking party"!
I just read that only young males engage in puddling. And only certain kinds of butterflies (sulphurs and swallowtails, whose males will patrol territories for females) will collect in puddle parties. Huh. Interesting, eh?

And as we entered the woods around the pond, we found more:

Tiger and spicebush swallowtails, and oodles of blues....summer azures?




I sat down and invited Isabelle to do the same. I showed her how to wipe sweat from her brow (we had no shortage of sweat) and put out her finger to get one to climb on.
When one of the blues accepted her gift and walked onto her finger, she said quietly, in a voice I have never heard from her, "Mommy. This is a dream come true."

She was in transports of joy. I feel like Mommy Of The Year.

The pond was lousy with dragonflies.

Blue dasher


A smallish snapping turtle (about two feet long) swam up to investigate us.
I got some good pictures, but I didn't realize, until I uploaded them, that I got one that looks like he is sticking his tongue out:

It's a leaf. But it makes for a fun photo.

C'est la vie

Remember the opening song in "The Lion King"?
The Circle of Life?
I had that kind of day.

I had an awesome day of birding and butterflying? and dragonflying? Is that what you call it?
The Oxbow is radically different when there hasn't been much rain. The water level was down far enough to open up pieces of land that I hadn't been able to walk on before.
I took a million pictures, but I narrowed it down to the ones I am really proud of.


Lots of butterflies...this Question Mark was very cooperative while I took its picture.
Look at those colors!

Let's play "Can You Spot the Killdeer?".

Well, I'm not especially proud of this one, but...it's a green heron.

This is what made the trip worth it:
A Yellow-billed cuckoo!
I saw this bird fly over and land, and beat a big yellow caterpillar against the branch before swallowing it. When I got a look through the binoculars, I broke out in giggles.
It's not really a life bird (I heard one at Bill and Julie's last year) but it's the first time
I actually SAW one.
And a cuckoo in the sunlight, sitting still.
I sat there and grinned like an idiot.

I don't know what kind it is, but doesn't it look like a Transformer?

Okay...THIS one is going to get blown up and hung on the wall.
I couldn't believe the luck of seeing this glittery dragonfly sitting in the sun, motionless.
A dragonfly dusted with shimmer-pink eyeshadow.

And not so great...on the way out of the Oxbow, I found a snake along the road that had obviously been hit by a car and had died, twisting and writhing in its death throes.

Is it me, or is this the weirdest fly ever?
Those eyes remind me of those sunglasses from the Eighties...the ones with just a slit in the front to see through....know what I mean?

Back at home, Nellie and I went out in the back yard and I checked on the baby robins.
A few days ago, there were four.
Yesterday, there were two.

Today, there was one.
What the Hell was going on? I looked all around the tree, but didn't see any that had fallen. A snake? A raccoon? WHAT????
I wondered if the parents were somehow not getting enough food for everyone. I went in and grabbed some mealworms (I wasn't sure if they ate them, but I wanted to give it a shot.)
I put the dish near the tree and went back in to watch.
About one minute later, a large thing came barreling into the robins' tree, and then flew out, with the parents chasing after it.
When I saw what it was, I realized where all the other babies had gone.
A red-shouldered hawk was taking them away.
I stood in the yard, looking up in the trees where the hawk had gone, with my hand over my mouth. I didn't know whether to cry or not.
I pulled myself together and told myself:
"The red-shouldered hawks down the road have mouths to feed."
"At least it was a native eating a native."
"That's nature."


The hawk came back as we were eating dinner. He or she perched on the purple martin house...at least someone is using the damn thing. The TRES laid two different clutches, and they both disappeared. The purple martins were too late. I wonder if I could put our bat house up there.
(More on bats later on...)


Nellie puzzles me.
She is deathly afraid of the TRES, but she could care less that the parent robins were screeching a few feet above her head.
The girls took it a lot better than I thought.
Isabelle said, "At least the HOUSE SPARROWS didn't get the babies!"
That's my girl.



After all the drama, Isabelle and I walked the yard. The thistles are blooming, and I didn't even see the inchworm until I uploaded this!

Tonight, as I was outside looking for the tree frog, I saw a bat fly over. This is the first one I have seen this year. I so need to get that bat house up!
I went in to tell the girls and Geoff, and they surprised me by wanting to go out and see.
We walked out in the back yard and watched the bats and fireflies. It was one of those moments.

Bootilicious frogs, cute piles of dryer lint, flutterbys, peek a boo BO, and dragonfly porn

I had a great day. And I love it when I can say that and mean it.
I had a program at the Loveland Castle today, for a homeschool group.
I think that my toe is whole, but it's jammed all to Hell and back.
The audience today was fantastic, the birds were well-behaved...and since I had Lorelei, Geoff met us at the castle and watched her while I presented.

Oh. By the way, I forgot to add this picture on yesterday's post:

Yep, they are doing what you think they are doing.
I'd like to see a human male get into that position.
Or maybe I wouldn't.

Okay, on to the cuteness...
I am so glad that Mom decided to drop Isabelle off at RAPTOR today. She has never been there, and today was a good day to see the birds.

Because we have a baby screech owl.
Go ahead. Soak that in.
Dryer lint has never been cuter.


Isabelle took MOM shopping yesterday, and talked Mom into buying her a Bug Habitat, complete with bug vacuum. She caught some little sulphurs and we released them in the back yard:

I love this picture.
It's not every day you get so close to a butterfly that you can tell the color of its eyes.


And I love this too:
I heard our little tree frog tonight, and I decided that it was time to meet the neighbor.
I took a flashlight with me, thinking that I would be able to find him by his eyeshine. Nope.
I moved the light back and forth, but I didn't even know what color I was looking for. They come in brown, gray and green. And all of those colors are in our Euonymus bush.
He doesn't mind when we are out there...he just keeps on singing.
So I narrowed down the section I heard him in, and then I saw a glint of frog-skin:

Tree frog booty. In all its glory.

I so wanted to reach in and pick him up, but I want him to stay and enjoy his visit.
So I only got pictures of his bee-hind. Well, at least now I know what color he is, and maybe I can find him again when he is facing out.
Isn't he cute, anyway? I could just kiss him.
But you know, I have kissed lots and lots of frogs...and I have my prince.

I have a new passion and Geoff got his first book review

I went to East Fork Lake today, to do some birding.
I didn't even go near the lake. It was full of yahoos on jet skies.
Yes, I saw some field sparrows, blah blah blah. But what really captured me and got me excited was all the butterflies, moths and dragonflies.
So after all I saw, I decided to start listing the butterflies and so on that I see. There's a website for that, like eBird, right?
Some of the names I know, and others I don't. I have been searching the Web for ID's, but I never would have had the time to post tonight if I had continued. A butterfly/moth/dragonfly field guide is in my immediate future. I will welcome any identifications here. It's like being a beginning birder. I would also love if anyone has a good site that's easy to use.


Let's start with a dead spider, shall we?


I think this is the same type of spider I saw at RAPTOR the other day, a fisher. But this one was dead, so I was only a little creeped out.

Now, look at how cool this is!
(Yellow collared scape moth)
THAT'S a pretty bug. I love the feathery antennae.

Big dragonflies with bold black stripes and brown/green bodies.


Plathemis lydia

And a black and green one on a lily pad.

Fuzzy, brown.

Eewww...orange leaf mold?

A very pretty yellow/green little guy with eye spots on the wings and green eyes!

Poor ragged thing.

A cute bug on a daisy.

This red weed was attractive, and I didn't notice the little green baby grasshopper (?) until I was reviewing the photo.

White grass seends.

"Ribbbbb-itt."


Orange and brown wings, white belly and black eyes.

I know this one!
Eastern pond hawk...I approved when I found out the name. A 'raptor'-like dragonfly.

Eastern comma...or is it a question mark? How do you tell?

Fuzzy red balls.

Cute overload.

More cuteness. I mean, my goodness.
This is the family I photographed last week.

"De PLANE!"
***
And now, here's Geoff's first review of his book, from Publisher's Weekly:

C.C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race: The True Story of the 1928 Coast-to-Coast Run Across America
Geoff Williams Rodale, $25.95 (336p) ISBN 978-1-59486-319-6

Pyle, a sports agent and promoter, came up with the idea of a footrace (mockingly known as “the Bunion Derby”) from Los Angeles to New York that promised $48,500 in cash, including $25,000 to the first-place winner. For a $125 entry fee, male participants got the chance for a nice payday while subjecting themselves to harsh weather, primitive housing and Pyle's ego and shady business practices. They also had to run 3,500 miles over 84 days (the equivalent of 40 miles a day) long before comfortable running shoes and sophisticated sports nutrition. Williams, a contributor to Entrepreneur magazine, has evocatively recreated a long-forgotten sports event, mixing colorful anecdotes from the race with vivid portraits of the runners. There's Brother John, a bearded zealot who raced in a sackcloth, and 20-year-old Andy Payne, a part-Cherokee Oklahoman who competed to pay off his family's farm and to win the attention of the girl he loved. What could have been one long injury report or a sappy piece of nostalgic nuttiness is a breezy, entertaining read that properly balances the runners' integrity with the comedy of errors that was Pyle's grand experiment and his life. Photos. (July)