This first photo is of a group of Eastern Tailed Blues. The image is not in perfect focus, but it is good enough so that one can see the distinctive black spots, the orange rectangles, and the tails.
My guess is that this next picture is of a female efferia pogonias robber fly. My knowledgeable friend Norman Lavers describes the insect in these words: "The female E. pogonias is also dark with a yellow mystax. Both sexes are excessively hairy, perhaps another defense against late season weather."
http://normanlavers.net/apocleinae.php
I have no idea what kind of spider I have captured in the next photo--perhaps a mangora spiculata. It was really very tiny and I was amazed to get such a clear shot of it. The camera saw much more than my eye could do.
Next we have what could be a neoscona domiciliorum. Whatever its true name may be, this is the spider that is most common in our woods during the late summer and fall. These webs cross all the trails and are frequently seen even well up in the treetops. This particular spider was very large--an impressive specimen silhouetted against the sky.
I cannot identify the green and yellow caterpillar in the following photo. It was crawling on the gravel path to the lake. I couldn't begin to guess at its host food so I just set it up on a Carolina Buckthorn branch, hoping for the best. Good luck little fellow.
The flower photographed below is probably Angular Ground Cherry (Physalis angulata). When green, the fruits are poisonous, but the ripened berries are sometimes used in jams and pies by particularly courageous (or foolish) cooks. Its cousin, Physalis virginiana, can also be eaten when ripe and is reputed to have medicinal benefits.
Sue and I have been baffled by this flower. It strongly resembles Calamint, but the crushed leaves have no mint smell and the flowers seem bigger and showier, with some dark inner dappling that I don't find in my other pictures of Calamint.
This is Frostweed or White Crownbeard (Verbesina virginica). While the flowering phase of this plant is very pretty, the most spectacular part of its life cycle actually occurs when it is dying or dead. On chilly winter mornings one can sometimes find convolutated and twisted exudations of ice crystals oozing from its stem. It looks very like ribbon candy. . . . Soldier beetles seem to be very common and industrious polinators in this area during the late summer.
