This time of year I can usually count on finding the occasional one maybe two dead bees in the vicinity of the patio table, but this morning the number of corpses (11 seen below, 17 total) concentrated in such a small area represented a cataclysmic and enigmatic die-off as far as our backyard is concerned: … Continue reading Bad Day For Bees
The inside of our garage door has been home to a brown widow spider and her various egg sacs for at least a year now. Most of the time when she senses movement she dives for her hiding place behind the door’s strut and hunkers down where she can barely be seen. But today as … Continue reading Meet Our Brown Widow!
(click it for the bigger picture) An intriguing spider, not quite one centimeter in length and of unknown species found on one of the hammock ropes in the backyard. I’ve not before seen one with such a large and tall cephalothorax in relation to its abdomen. I have an ID request in to the indispensable … Continue reading Today’s Big Picture Of A Little Thing
This morning I enjoyed a couple unique experiences, the first involving a spider floating in full retracted dead position upon the surface of the backyard waterbowl, who turned out not to be dead, and the second demonstrating a rather exceptional ability to find things I hadn’t even lost yet. Maybe you saw my video a … Continue reading Minor Miracles
Last summer, I moved outside a small birdhouse that Susan made (and that’s decoratively lived inside since she built it long before I came along). I attached it to a decorative post that wasn’t doing very well holding a birdbath and for a little extra height I mounted the post to a small end table … Continue reading Pleasant Surprise
I always make a point during a morning break in the action to go out into the backyard and check on the tortoise — just to make sure she’s her usual tortoise self. On this morning, passing the birdbath on my way to Buster’s hutch, I sighted a spider flailing a bit in the water, … Continue reading Today’s Episode Of Lunch Hour Amateur Biologist Brought To You By…
Not sure whether she flew away or blew away, but after this snap was taken by Susan, I set the katydid on a callalily leaf in hopes it would live to see another day. A short while later I came out to check and the critter seemed pretty spent, but then a bit later I … Continue reading Katydid Or Katydidn’t
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