They're here!

What's better than the return of the swallows to Capistrano?  Of course! the first black swallowtail larva of the year in my garden.

 
This one is on Rue rather than dill or fennel.

Cooperation...

Cooperation

 

gets the prey into the nest...

Enchanted

Enchanted, a photo by pdecell on Flickr.

Sometimes I like to play with the color RGB color curves. Often they don't come out but this one started out as a pretty ordinary picture and with the right tweaking a got some really surprising effects.

Opuntia

From my garden, these cacti over winter nicely outdoors in Kansas.  The plant is beyond prickly- so hard to handle- but the flowers!

Neglected Land

I've badly neglected my land in Second Life so I have been spending a few days doing creating this little forest lane. Second Life runs on Windows 8 and I use a Logitech touch pad in lieu of a mouse. This is my region on the Second Life mainland, Carmine.  In Second Life I am Simone Gateaux.

If you do Second Life come visit at: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Carmine/202/205/135

Skeletonizing larvae

Lots of insects make their living at least part of the time by skeletonizing leaves-that is,eating the choice lower epidermis and mesophyll layer of tissue but leaving the tougher leave veins. Today at Clinton Lake I noticed of skeletonized oak leaves. And it didn't take long to find the culprits hard at work.

These are very young saw fly larvae, probably scarlet oak sawfly larvae. I was thinking that these were real young but it looks like the mature sawfly is pretty small. Here's a link: http://na.fs.fed.us/spfo/pubs/pest_al/sawfly/sawfly.htm

Unusual Visitor

Unusual Visitor, a photo by pdecell on Flickr.

Being in a new subdivision I don't get too many unusual insects. But last night a "fish fly" (Megaloptera) came to my house light. This and the other shots in this series were taken on my screened porch just before I released the insect. Bugguide suggests this is Chauliodes rastricornis.

The larvae are aquatic and the adults are nocturnal and have relatively short life spans. This one came to my lights at night and I took this shot just before I released it in the morning. The insect is maybe 3 cm long- roughly an inch and a half. The order Megaloptera was originally considered to be a suborder of the Neuroptera which today includes more familiar insects such as lacewings and antlions.

As if by their own light

Was out in the yard today after school with the sun out for the first time in maybe five days. Ironically though I got more interested in the textures than the color of the flowers in my garden.

Tulip- and the tulip is one of those "black" varieties.

Vinca

Dandelion