magickcanoe.com Blog

Guess who’s back in town? Yes, it’s those wonderfully bizarre Mantidflies (Climaciella brunnea). This summer’s weather has been a little odd – cool and rainy – so insect activity hasn’t seemed to be entirely normal. I’d been watching for the return of the Mantidflies, and perhaps they have been around for awhile, but I didn’t […]

Just a short post today. On nights when I’m not too tired, I’ve been going out looking for moths after dark. Sometimes I set up a bug-zapper lamp wrapped in a white sheet (to prevent moth fatalities), and other times, I just walk around the garden with a flashlight, watching for moths moving between the […]

Yesterday, an hour or so before sunset, I went for a walk in the fields to check for signs of life on the milkweed plants. Apart from the Monarch caterpillars, I had a couple of interesting finds. The first was a Katydid in the process of molting – click on the above photo for a […]

One evening last week, just before sunset, I spotted a bead of molten gold on a morning glory leaf in the garden. Closer inspection revealed a mating pair of Golden Tortoise Beetles (Charidotella sexpunctata bicolor). For once, I didn’t have a camera in hand — I was taking vegetable scraps out to the compost heap […]

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve had a few fleeting glimpses of a large spider lurking in our living room, occasionally appearing among a stack of books and art supplies. I could never get a good enough look to be sure of what she might be. A few days ago, she finally made a […]