Happy Tuesday: Happy Release Day

Our K level class had a monarch chrysalis from the general ed teacher's father. None of us have seen any other caterpillars. So it was put in an enclosure and we waited. 

She eclosed over the weekend and was beating her wings violently against the enclosure. She had to be released immediately. There were three students in attendance this morning and we wanted them to have the experience of handling the monarch, but we could tell that she would not tolerate waiting on a finger tip. 

Of course, this was the day that I purposefully kept my bug camera at home. Rain was forecast and I didn't want to chance getting it wet. I only had my phone camera. It would have to suffice, and it did for this girl. The bug camera would not have been any better than this.

The monarch soared so high over the school,
in huge circles, that we lost sight of her
within 20 seconds.

I edited the video, slowed it down, and merged the two videos together. You still can't see much, but it's a memory of the Release Day that went all wrong! We were extremely pleased and the children experienced their first release. They also learned, after asking, that butterflies are not made of butter, and that they fly with muscles like ours. We have been studying aeronautics so they know the difference between flying, gliding, and floating. Hopefully. 

May we all have a happy Tuesday!

More happiness at 
Comedy Plus

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Monday Sparks: Breathing

Reasons to Teach Kids Breathing Exercises

Join Sparks

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Awww Monday: Mr. Pigeon

Mr. Pigeon before his rescue.

In mid-August, my daughter Anna found an ill pigeon on one of her upper porches. She named him Mr. Pigeon. He would not fly and never tried to escape her. She said he was coated with something like paint; the bird was "too black." She found a pigeon rehabilitator, Lisa Ann, who came and took the poor boy "home" to live with three other pigeons she had for rehab. 

The next day, Lisa Anna called Anna and said Mr. Pigeon was dirty, exhausted, had minor injuries, and was malnourished, but he would recover. Mr. Pigeon's dark color was simply a variation of color that all pigeons have. Best of all, the four birds had already developed into a flock, which would facilitate Mr. Pigeon's healing. A couple of weeks later, Anna got photos of the bird. He looked new!

Mr. Pigeon is in the middle.

In September, Lisa Ann introduced the four to a wild flock in an empty parking garage in New Haven early on a Sunday morning. The wild flock accepted the new guys very quickly, and the story had a very happy ending. 

Here are photos of the two flocks merging and bonding in the air and on the ground:

I was unable to get two videos for this post, but when I do receive them, I will post them. They brought tears to our eyes. A lonely pigeon who seemed to have given up on life was happy in a flock of his peers and he soared!

Lisa Ann rehabs dogs, cats, birds, and any other creature that needs her. 

💓 Bless you, Lisa Ann. 💓

Joint Awww Monday at
Comedy Plus

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Photo Sunday: Black

Some animals with black in their common name:

Black Arches - Hodges#10295 (Melanchra assimilis)

Black and Yellow Mud Dauber (Sceliphron caementarium)

Black bear (Ursus americanus)

Black Blister Beetle (Epicauta pensylvanica)

Black Swallowtail - Hodges#4159 (Papilio polyxenes)

Black-and-yellow Lichen Moth - Hodges#8087
(Lycomorpha pholus)

Black-and-Yellow Argiope (Argiope aurantia)

Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapillus)

Juvenile Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapillus)

I couldn't resist the duplication of species.

Black-etched Prominent - Hodges#7942 (Tecmessa scitiscripta)

Black-horned Smoothtail (Epistrophe grossulariae)

Blackjacket (Vespula consobrina)

Black-rimmed Prominent - Hodges#7922 (Pheosia rimosa)

Half-black Bumble Bee (Bombus vagans) and
Eastern Modest Masked Bee (Hylaeus modestus modestus)

Black-shouldered Spinyleg (Dromogomphus spinosus)

Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus)

Submit your black at
Photo Sunday

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My Simple Photo a Day Project

09.17.2022 Bread is my therapy

While visiting blogs today, I ran across Soma, a graphic artist at Ink Torrents. On her sidebar I saw a link to her Simple 365 Photo a Day Project. She photographed a simple thing every day and captioned each. Soma chose black & white for her photos. I'm going to do as I feel when I feel it. The photos will most likely all be from my phone. They will show the comfort of simple things. I'm changing it to a Photo a Day project because I am starting so late in the year.

As each day goes to the next, I want to move the old photos to a new tab on the blog. I'll see how that designing and formatting go, but that's the plan. 

Yesterday my first shot was of a loaf of King Arthur Flour sandwich bread that I have been making lately. Click the link for the recipe. If a recipe is involved, I will link to it in the sidebar. Unfortunately, I don't know how to make it open in a new window or tab, so just right-click it for a new window or tab.

Thank you, Soma.

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Saturday Critters: Chrysomelid beetle larva

Case-bearing Beetle Larva

This is a photo of an exciting find for my late husband and myself. It wasn’t just a lifer (bug hunters have lifers, just as birders do), it was one of an entire subfamily that I had never known, let alone seen. We all know leaf beetles to some extent: seed beetles, tortoise beetles, calligrapha beetles, the Colorado potato beetle, flea beetles, even lady beetles. But this is the larva of another: a case-bearing leaf beetle: “Larvae are casebearers, living in and protected by a case constructed of their fecal matter and sometimes plant debris. The case is shorter than the larva that remains folded inside it. Eggs are laid in carefully sculpted packets formed from feces and abdominal secretions. . . " (1)

I saw this minute lump, or dot, on an alder leaf in the top photo with my finger tip for scale. A flea beetle was inspecting the lump. I could tell immediately that this was a living creature because of the color and pattern on the dot. I did some shots, took the leaf, and carried it home for inspection. We had a great time figuring out what it was: we went through sawfly larvae, spiders (at one point, it looked like spider legs coming out of the case), until finally, after all the photos and observations, I thought of case bearers. Some case-bearers use leaf litter to construct their cases. This case-bearer uses its own poop (frass).

The only case bearers I knew of at that point were moths, but I searched for others and found Cryptocephalinae. Discovering the ID of a new-to-me insect without help from scientists is one of the most exciting things to do. Of course, what those entomologists have taught me through discussions of their finds and of my photos is what prepared me to be able to figure this out.

I kept the larva in a mason jar with alder leaves for a while but I didn’t like how the life cycle was progressing so I set it free. Unfortunately, I have never found another. I so wanted to see the adult. We could have identified which leaf beetle it was.

By the way: if anyone is interested in insect hunting, I suggest investigating groves of alders. They sustain a huge variety of insects and, therefore, the birds, especially warblers, are there to feed on them.

References: 

1. Bugguide: Subfamily Cryptocephalinae - Case-bearing Leaf Beetles

More critters at
Viewing Nature with Eileen

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Review: Single with Cat

Single with Cat by Rosa Silva
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a very enjoyable book. It is a romance, which I barely ever read. But it is set in Portugal and that is fun. I can't remember a book set in that country. The outcome is predictable but especially satisfying; that is fine because I always enjoy seeing how the author untangles all of the intrigue in the plot. And romance novels have a lot of intrigue!

The characters all have secrets; some you know and some you try to find clues as to what they are. The reader is, therefore, engaged in the romance and the individual characters. That always makes for a good read. They are also multi-faceted; no one is one-dimensional; there are no purely evil or unbelievably good people.

However, there are many problems. It was not edited well, there was no proof-reading, and the translation to English fails many times. There is also repetition and cliché that is tiresome. The format of the Kindle edition needs to be tidied up, also. There were two or three breaks in two characters that were jarring because of their violence that did not fit with the character's personality. If these problems are cleaned up, I would say this is a perfect rainy day book. As it is now, though, I was frustrated by the errors interrupting my reading.

Disclosure: I was asked by the author to review her book.

View all my reviews

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Skywatch Friday: Mead Hill Cemetery

Mead Hill Cemetery, Morgan, Vermont

It was a beautiful, cold day on Thursday. All of the rain was swept away by these bright clouds that flowed over us all day. The cemetery is not at the peak of the hill so you cannot see the Green Mountains on the other side. That sight will be for another day. Summer is truly over now; you can feel autumn everywhere. 

More skies are here.

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Two Nicrophorus Beetle Species Plus . . .

Roundneck Sexton Beetle (Nicrophorus orbicollis)

Above is the roundneck sexton beetle that I photographed after capture (it was, of course, released after the photo session). You can see that the area after the head, called the thorax, but before the body, which is called the abdomen, is pure black. These beetles are attracted to moth lights, which is where I always find them. Sexton beetles are named after the people who look after a church and churchyard, and used to be gravediggers.

Tomentose Burying Beetle (Nicrophorus tomentosus)

Above is Jody's photo of a tomentose burying beetle. The thorax, between head and body, is covered with luxurious gold hair. That is how you can tell the two species apart. But there is one other behavior that tells them apart. The roundneck buries dead animals that it finds, and then feeds on them. The tomentose (also called the gold-necked carrion) digs a hole under the animal and covers the animal with leaf litter. Both species have antennae with orange-tipped clubs. They smell the bodies of the dead with those clubs, which are olfactory organs. 

Each of these beetles are in the family Silphidae which are carrion beetles. Carrion is "the decaying flesh of dead animals." Without carrion beetles, vultures, and other decomposers, we would be in a heap of trouble with dead animals piled a mile high.

All this is simply background to what fascinated Jody and I, though.  Look at my photograph of another roundneck beetle, and see if you notice a hitchhiker or two:

If you don't see them there, you will see them on Jody's tomentose: 

The little bugs on the beetles are Carrion Beetle Mites (Genus Poecilochirus). The mites are not doing a thing to the beetles except hitchhiking. This is called phoresis (one creature attaches itself to another solely to travel). The mites lay their eggs in dead animals, but they are tiny and the beetles can get them where they need to go quickly. The best, or biggest, example of phoresis  is a person riding a horse to go from one point to another. Another note about mites: they have eight legs, like spiders. But they are not spiders. They also are not insects.

Jody made a video of the beetle and mites. It may seem gruesome, but try to stick with it. The mites are not eating the beetle. They are, though, probably telling the beetle to get with it and take them to a carcass quick!

References:

• Bugguide: Species Nicrophorus tomentosus - Tomentose Burying Beetle
• Bugguide: Species Nicrophorus orbicollis - Roundneck Sexton Beetle
• iNaturalist: Carrion Beetle Mites
• National Park Service: A Symbiotic Relationship - Carrion Beetles and Mites
• Wikipedia: Phoresis

Nature Notes at Rambling Woods 2

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