Blues by the Beach--More Macro Photography with the Samsung S390G

Sue and I have recently upgraded our main "adventure/nature" camera to an Olympus TG 3--a camera that resists squashing, drowning, dropping, and freezing. It also takes superb macro photographs at distances of less than 1/2 inch. That said, my cheap cell phone stays with me more of the time and is a lot less finicky. To take macro photos, I just attach my freebe loupe with two rubber bands and try to guess at the right distance to hold the camera (about three inches). Sometimes the cell phone photos are well worth having.

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.

Climate Change Headlines

For some reason I enjoy reading the headlines about climate change. Here, without comment, is a sampling of the news headlines that have popped up on my Google News feed:

Climate change makes salamanders shrink, scientists say
In Ranchers Vs. Weeds, Climate Change Gives Weeds An Edge
Feds spent $700000 on a climate change musical
What Famous Old Paintings Can Tell Us About Climate Change
Tragedy in Washington state: Why climate change will make mudslides more common
Climate change will make UK weather too wet and too dry, says Met Office
Climate change: While we fiddle, the world burns ... and floods and parches
Climate Change Art: That Sinking Feeling
Teachers swap climate change scare stories for fun and games
Debunking Myths: Oregonians ARE Worried about Climate Change
Boriskin: Blame Bush for ‘climate change'
Obama: Denying Climate Change Is Like Saying the Moon Is “Made of Cheese”
Three Ways Climate Change Is Going to Ruin Your Beer
8 Summer Miseries Made Worse by Global Warming, From Poison Ivy to Allergies
Climate Change Could Alter the Human Male-Female Ratio
What Do Chinese Dumplings Have to Do With Global Warming?
Mountain Goats Are Shrinking—A Lot—Because of Global Warming
Inventing Climate-Change Literature
Climate Change Is Real. Too Bad Accurate Climate Models Aren't.
Climate Change Threatens to Strip the Identity of Glacier National Park
Texas And Oklahoma, Hotbeds Of Climate Change Denialism, Wracked By Another Year Of Warming-Worsened Droughts JANUARY 14, 2013
Texas, Oklahoma Drought ‘All But Over’ May 21st, 2015
Is global warming increasing the risk of shark attacks? Higher temperatures blamed for record number in North Carolina
What climate change will do to your loaf of bread
The White House Wants Your Doctor To Teach You About Global Warming
Delayed flight? Blame global warming
Mosquitoes, Ticks and Poison Ivy Thriving with Climate Change
2015 and 2016 set to break global heat records (London September 14, 2015)
Obama Seeks Psychological Help with Climate Change
New Study Claims Global Warming Is Producing Massive Swarms Of Killer Mosquitos
CLIMATE CHANGE COULD SHRINK YOUR GRANDKID’S INCOME SAYS NEW SCIENTIFIC PAPER
Gains Of Antarctic Ice Sheet Greater Than Losses: NASA Study
Global Warming May Affect Birth Rates: People Less Likely To Have Sex In Hotter Temperatures
Why Can't We Find Aliens? Climate Change Killed Them
Recent improvement and projected worsening of weather in the United States. Nature, 2016; 532 (7599): 357 DOI: 10.1038/nature17441
CO2 is making Earth greener; too bad about the rising seas
Life on Earth-like planets could be impeded by global warming, scientists say
Trees Can Limit Climate Change—Unless It Kills Them First
John Kerry warns your refrigerator is as dangerous as ISIS
Polar bears are totally screwed
Polar bears in Svalbard in good condition – so far

AND IN GOOD NEWS . . .
Climate change could make Middle East 'uninhabitable'


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Note: I haven't tried to screen these headlines in any way--except to select ones that somehow struck my fancy. If you'd like to actually read one of these articles, just enclose the entire headline in quotation marks and plug it into Google Search. That will take you to my source.

JAWS!

Life in the Ozarks can't really compete with the Spielberg movie, or can it?

I guess the answer demands on how closely one is able to observe nature and how fully one uses one's imagination. And imagination was really what caused the horror in Jaws, anyway.

So here we go.

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The Giant Stag Beetle

My first ferocious insect is actually only frightful to see.

Lucanus elaphus, the Giant Stag Beetle, is a huge insect almost three inches long with pincers of about an inch. Fortunately those pincers are mostly for show. Only the male has such large ones, and he uses them only to impress the ladies and to wrestle with the guys. He hasn't actually got the strength to give much of a pinch with them.

The adult beetle lives for about a month, defending a rotten stump from other males and mating when possible. (The male in the two photos above is posing on one of my deck posts, which I hope he is not correct in believing to be rotten wood.) The female lays eggs in the stump and they hatch in due time into the larval form. For the next few years the larvae munch away, growing and molting toward their brief lives in the sun.

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The Ant Lion

Unlike the Giant Stag Beetle, the inconspicuous Ant Lion is a ferocious predator . . . but only in its larval stage. As an adult, it is a pretty little thing (much like a damselfly) and it feeds only on pollen and nectar (except for a few species that also eat small bugs).

The Ant Lion larva is tiny (less than 1/2 inch) and I've never actually seen one, though their sand traps are common and unmistakable. I have a whole colony of these sand traps just outside my garage door, so today I decided to use Sue's new TG-3 camera to take a close-up photo of the very bottom of such a trap, where the Ant Lion lies concealed and waiting for an unfortunate ant to slip over the edge.

If you look very closely and use a bit of imagination, you can just make out the front-half of the sand-covered beastie. It helps, however, to know what you should be seeing so here is a link to a photo from the of the larva:

Nothing helps the imagination more than a bit of video. National Geographic has a nice YouTube piece about the Ant Lion doing its job: Antlion Death Trap. Apparently, there is a price to pay for being so cruelly predatory: Ant Lions are the most constipated of insects, so much so that they have no anuses!

And that scares even me.

The Gordian Worm

The Gordian Worm youtube video

The Gordian Worm is a very long, very slender insect parasite that gets its common name because it is sometimes found tangled up in what almost seems to be a living gordian knot. It is also known as a Horsehair Worm because of the typically ill-informed folklore that "the long, thin hairs of a horse's mane or tail [can fall] into the water trough as a horse [drinks] and later [come] to life."

The scientific name for this animal is Nematomorphora. In its larval stage it is a parasite of grasshoppers and crickets. What happens is that the eggs hatch into tiny larvae which are then encysted on submerged grass or other plants. When these are eaten by grasshoppers or crickets, the Nematomorphora larvae grow inside the host until they eventually break free into the adult worms. Exactly how these worms grow as long as they obviously do is not explained in my source material.

Interestingly there are occasional instances of Gordian worms infecting humans--though these seem to occur only in the Far East and are apparently instances of pseudoparasitism. I.e., a person accidentally or intentionally eats an infected grasshopper or cricket. This introduces the worm into the human, but the worm is incapable of thriving in its new host.

For a truly fascinating introduction to horsehair worms and similar parasites, watch this YouTube video: Horse Hair Worms: http://youtu.be/so8ScD6m1MI
Sources:
http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/2000/2012.html
http://www.nematophora.net

The Water Bottle Money Can't Buy`

Cyclists need water. Moreover they often need to drink water while pedaling down the highway at over 20 mph. Yet the design of the usual sports bottle requires one to tilt one's head up sharply, risk taking one's eyes off the road, and both squeeze and suck on the bottle to get a few precious sips of H2O. It's sad. And dangerous.

Enter "The Water Bottle Money Can't Buy." To make this bottle, you need a section of 1/4-inch silicon or poly tubing that is about an inch longer than your water bottle is deep. Drill a 1/4-inch hole through the lid of the bottle and another 1/8-inch hole a little distance away. Now slide the tubing into the bottle and you have a hydration system that is much easier and safer to use.

You can drill your 1/4-inch hole right through the nozzle of a regular sports bottle for a professional-looking bottle. Or you can do what I have done and recycle a 20-ounce Gatorade bottle. Either one is a big improvement on an ordinary sports bottle.