a place where nature, photography and writing meet
Yes, indeed… just like clockwork. Yesterday, June 21, 2007, I found the first Brown Mantidfly (Climaciella brunnea) of the summer (click on image for larger view). Those of you who have been reading my blog for awhile may remember that I posted about these little creatures exactly one year ago today, after finding the first […]
I guess the best way to describe this weekend was that it was a blockbuster as far as spider and insect activity is concerned. All of a sudden, there is motion everywhere in the fields and woods here at the farm. Yesterday, I photographed several species of spiders — a couple of them new to […]
A couple of days ago, I wrote about the Eris militaris spiders that have made silky refuges on the back of an old plastic lawnchair in the small orchard here at the farm. During one of my follow-up checks, I found that there are now two female spiders on the chair – one inside a […]
Part of the fascination of studying nature is that things are often not as simple and uncomplicated as they appear. This is one of those stories that starts off seeming to be one thing, but ends up being something quite else. Let me take you back to the beginning. There’s an old plastic lawnchair sitting […]
As promised, here’s a brief report on the nature field day that my friend, Eric Snyder, and I led at the Richmond Conservation Area on May 28, 2007. We spent much of the day exploring the nature trails with twenty of Lisa Hetherington’s science students from Bell High School. I believe this was our fourth […]
Yesterday’s field trip with the high schools students went very well. I’ll post something about it tomorrow after all of the photos are up online. As it turned out, we spent most of our time walking along discussing interesting things found along the trail. As a consequence, we ended up not having time to do […]
I believe the average person’s reaction to seeing an Eastern Tent Caterpillar nest may be to become grossed out, or perhaps angry and determined to rip it down. I’ll admit that I experience some of that urge to rip down nests when I discover them in our apple trees. In that case, I generally cut […]