Polyphemus moth caterpillar (September)

(Note: while the next several posts may not be exactly timely, I try to always post things in the order I found them.)

So we were hiking around during the 2011 summer/fall drought (meaning, bad for mushrooms), and my hiking pal came upon this bright bright BRIGHT green fat fat FAT caterpillar.


It was the caterpillar of a Polyphemus moth (Antheraea polyphemus)—a big elegant silkworm moth, many shades of brown with nice eyespots on the wings. The male moths have enormous feathery antennae (a pic of one I found, here), for detecting pheromones from the females.

It was really hard to get a good photo of this caterpillar, because it wouldn’t stop walking. Apparently, at this time of year, they won’t stop walking. If you pick them up, they just keep walking. You try putting it on your friend’s arm to get a better shot, and they just keep walking. You try blocking it with a leaf, and it won’t stop walking.

I read that when these silkworm moth caterpillars are getting ready to make their cocoon, they stop eating, and start walking—they’re called “wanderers.” They’re looking for the right place to park for the winter and make their cocoon.

If it tries to get around you and your leaf, and falls approximately 1” off a little rock, it might stop walking and curl up defensively.



This particular brand of (fat!) caterpillar has a tendency to withdraw their heads into their fat, translucent, luminous bodies when they’re not marching ever forward. Seems to be a characteristic pose they strike. I would probably do that too, if I had folds of beautiful, neon-green, floppy soft skin.


 

When he fell approximately 1”, thanks to my pestering him with a leaf, he grabbed onto a little clump of loose moss and leaf, and didn’t let go.



This gave me a chance to get a passable shot of his prolegs—something I never took any notice of, until a Flickr contact posted this exquisite macro shot of them. Since I saw that image, caterpillar prolegs have become one of my most favorite things in the world. The prolegs are the dark grey and brown crazy-shaped things (note the fifth pair at the very end). Of course you can see why I’m nuts about them. Ask my friends--they'll tell you! "Oh, don't get her started on prolegs..."

The prolegs are tipped with “crochets,” little hooklets all around the edge. (In my image you can’t actually see them--they're way too tiny--they’re on the very edge of the brown bits.) The number, size, and arrangement of the crochets are used in identification. Who knew! Not me!

The six pairs of legs near his head are true legs—with joints and everything, and little claws at the end. Prolegs aren’t jointed, and have limited musculature. One source said they operate via hydraulics.

*Warning: if your supposed caterpillar has more than five pairs of prolegs (counting the ones at the very end), it is not a moth or butterfly! Run!

Anyway, rather than going on about caterpillar proleg crochets that you can’t actually see in these images, I’ll wander back to an overview of the super-cool prolegs. Of all the caterpillars I’ve seen in all my years of seeing caterpillars, I never really noticed their prolegs, which are bizarre, stumpy and wonderful. I never tire of caterpillar prolegs.

There’s also the issue of this caterpillar’s gorgeous translucence.  He really did look like a bioluminescent water balloon creature. If you click on the images to see full-sized, you can see how the light is passing through it, making him glow.

I’ve found more than one of their cocoons. I’m pretty sure whose cocoon it is, since I found one right before it hatched, and saw who was inside. Here’s one with a portion of the pupa’s exuvia still inside.



Well, that’s about it, really.

Summer/fall 2011, yet another drought, but still: Red-shouldered bugs!

I know it’s considered bad blogging form to apologize for a lapse in posts, but there was yet another summer/fall drought, and I kept waiting for it to end but it never did. It stopped raining. No rain = hardly any mushrooms. I lost my momentum. I kept hiking anyhow...

I even got a message from a Flickr mushroom/nature contact in Australia who noticed I hadn’t been uploading anything—she thought something had happened to me! I only know her from Flickr!

“Hello, I hope you don't mind me sending you this flickrmail... actually I'm just wondering where you are? You haven't posted anything since last October, and I hope you're ok and not terribly ill or anything. So anyway, happy new year, I hope we see you back again soon.”
                                              
Well, the past is the past, so let’s just jump back in the game! Get a load of THIS!

Red-shouldered bug on goldenrain tree seed, late August

I was working on campus, and these bugs were all over the building and walkways for days and days. Tiny fat nymphs, breeding pairs, and everything in between, all around some goldenrain trees. At first I thought they were “just” box elder bugs, but it finally sunk in that they didn’t quite match. So I started bringing my camera in, got some photos, and did a proper ID check.

(Hi—there’s a lot of fun detail that shows up when you view these images larger, by clicking on them...)

Above, Jadera haematoloma, nymphs and instars, all over Koelreuteria paniculata, just like they say they do.

They were crazy for the seeds, very active, and when disturbed (like when I suddenly loomed over them with my camera), they only ran off for a few seconds before hurrying back to eat more.

So, in the course of learning about these bugs, I found out about goldenrain trees too, because just about every reference mentioned them in relation to the red-shouldered bugs, and I didn't know what tree it was anyway when I was picking up the 3-lobed seed pods and saying, “What the heck are these.” The trees are not native, they’re from Northern China, Japan & Korea, have “invasive potential”, introduced in the early 1800’s, Thomas Jefferson, blah blah.

Anyway these Red-shouldered bugs really go for goldenrain trees, and even though there can be seemingly-huge populations of them, no sources mentioned they do much actual damage. They feed on the fruits of lots of other trees, too.

Incidentally, I saw tiny white spikes on some of the seeds, which I would guess was some type of fungus...


Above, a whole bunch of plump little nymphs on a goldenrain tree seed.

Below, more and more. I just thought they were awfully photogenic, creating really great compositions as they went about their lives.

If there’s tons of them around somebody’s house and there's little kids running around, and some of the bugs get squished, it can alarm parents who wonder what the heck all that red stuff is all over their kids! But they are harmless.


I like the image above because you can see the insides of that one on the left! No idea what organ that is. If there’s any entomologists out there, please speak up! Really, click to view large, it's worth it.

Below, fat little nymphs and a breeding pair! Everything at once!



And finally, below, a Magritte-like composition, moody and surreal.



All this just goes to show that there are fascinating tiny things everywhere.
And I will find them, and eventually show you.

A Compilation of Forest Findings Spanning Six Weeks of Mostly-Bad Weather for Mushrooms

I wish I had tons of beautiful and wondrous mushroom pics…spring started off with a glorious wet bang, but then it got really, really HOT and there was NO RAIN for WEEKS, so all the mushrooms said, “Catch you later if you can come up with some rain" but I could not make it rain. I did manage to scrounge up other aspects of small forest life over several weeks. There’s a few mushrooms here, from early on.

Here they are, in order of encounter. As ever, click images to view full-screen, revealing marvelous details.



A giant beast of a horsefly, on a black truck bed liner. This isn’t colorized or anything—that’s just him, steely-grey and sinister. Over an inch long. Look at those eyes! His eyes are his whole head! He was very wary--I barely got this one shot.
*9-13 Edit: This is a male Tabanus atratus, "black horse fly". The females have a little space between their eyes, the males don't. The females bite. The males don't!



A little chanterelle. This was July 9th, and things were starting to get pretty dry…but I did find a nice number of them before it got bad.



Above, a nice natural composition of Old Man of the Woods mushroom (Strobilomyces), a piece of hickory shell and a little red Russula.



Above, that’s Stan, photographing a lobster mushroom, which might seem pretty boring, except nobody finds lobster mushrooms around here! But then, I did! And word got out, and Stan, Wild-Edible-Mushroom-Hunter-Supreme-King-of-Kings, asked if I could find the spot again, and I did! He wanted to see the environment they were associated with—what kinds of trees? Overgrown or open?--etc. I mean, if Stan hadn’t found them yet, well, then they just weren’t out there. So let’s just say I was lucky, and I found the first ones ever found around here. We found the stumps of the ones I’d already cut, and I found another one! Look:



You might need to sit down for this next part. Lobster mushrooms--Hypomyces lactifluorum—are actually mushrooms being parasitized by another fungus. The Hypomyces attacks only two “regular” mushrooms--Lactarius or Russula (as far as we know). It turns the surface of the gilled mushroom host into a cooked-lobster orange crust, and makes the flesh white, and they get all gnarly and distorted, and it makes them taste of shellfish.  Don’t believe me? Read Tom Volk’s entry and Mushroom Expert’s entry, and search “lobster mushroom.” It's all true.


Above, the “gnarly” part I mentioned.



Well, we have a lot more to cover here, so yes, I ate them, and yes, they were delicious, I hope I find many more, etc., etc.


Above, a pretty little snake, as yet unidentified. I only have so many field guides. If you know, leave a comment! *Edit: I'm going with Dekay's Brownsnake (Storeria dekayi), unless someone tells me otherwise. These shy snakes are traditionally only about a foot long. Non-venomous, if you were wondering.



A partially skeletonized leaf I found, ravaged by Japanese beetles, I know because I saw them eating other ones elsewhere.



Shell of the periodical Magicicada (left) next to the regular "annual" cicada.



These weren't out at the same time; I just found their leftover shells. Big long post about Magicicada/13-year Cicadas here.



A fresh little Spiny Puffball, Lycoperdon echinatum.

Below, Gem-studded Puffballs, Lycoperdon perlatum.


Below, the infamous “dog vomit slime” (Fuligo septica)! For real! That’s what it’s really called!





I've found a couple references to these “red, blood-like spots from the liquefied breakdown of fungal tissue,” but I don’t know why dog-vomit slime mold does this, and nobody else does. Does no one care???



Above, proof of chanterelles. Yes, I rinse my mushrooms (when necessary), because I saw a video of a real live chef trying to figure out once and for all if it mattered if you washed your mushrooms (since most of them have a lot of liquid in them anyway), and he sautéed washed and great un-washed mushrooms at the same time, side by side, and declared that he couldn't find any difference. Anyway dry-sautéing them seems to be the way go with chanterelles, there they are in a pan gently sizzling away with no oil or butter or anything, and suddenly they release a whole bunch of liquid, then you add your fat and finish cooking them. That's just how it is.

Below, a sprawled-out napping squirrel, July 31, one of the very hot days.



Above, a Pandorus sphinx moth! I became nearly hysterical when I saw this, because I’d seen pictures of Oleander Hawk Moths, and I thought this was one, even though there’s no Oleander around here (except in pots, as annuals), and I thought they lived in Africa and Asia, and I’d decided that Oleander Hawk Moths were the most beautiful moths I’d ever seen. Look them up, you’ll see.

I was saying hello to a pal and we were out by the parking lot and she said “Look at that big green moth on the wall over there.” Just like that. And I didn't have my camera on me, and I tried using her cell phone but the moth was too high even with a stepladder, and she brought out her real live DSLR camera but the battery was dead, so she gave me a ride home so I could get my camera (I had walked downtown), and I backed my friend’s truck right up to the building so I could stand on it and try to get close enough, and the people inside the store came out and one of them was a guy studying katydids so that was good and he had his camera and we both took some pictures and then I said “Hey, you should try to get him onto your hand and then we can take more pictures maybe closer and it will either get on your hand or fly away but maybe it will fly someplace better” and he tried, and it flew away but it did land someplace better, onto some black metal stairs (closer to where we could reach, at least), so we took more pictures and I was mostly satisfied.



Eumorpha pandorus, click to view large, you can see individual scales…gorgeous! The colors! The shape of the wings!

Then, a few days later, I came home and at my front door was this:



I had ranted enough to someone about finding this moth that he told someone else about it, and the guy he was talking to said “Hey, there’s a big dead moth in our stockroom” and came out with this. How sweet!

Here’s some honeycomb in a      fallen tree in the woods. We  couldn't quite figure out why it    was all exposed like this, if it  was normal, etc. The bees were  calm, not like the tree had just  fallen over or something…

Above, some mushrooms that I haven’t taken the time to ID yet. It’s right on the tip of my brain…Pluteus. Pluteus cervinus, no doubt. Pink gills, growing on wood.

We found a nice fruiting of oyster mushrooms. Below, after we cut off what we wanted, some ants moved in.



The ants were very interested in whatever they were finding, I think it was the tiny larvae of beetles that were exposed when we cut the mushrooms. That long flat white thing is a gill--picture a regular store-bought mushroom, cut across the cap. This is one of my favorite images.



Some very attractive green acorns. Don’t know what kind.

Below, horrible, horrible seed ticks (and one regular horrible tick), on packing tape, that I got off my pants after a hike. First, I found about 15 on my socks, then I started to look more closely at my other clothing.



If you click on this, to see full-sized, you can barely see that these have only six legs, because when they first hatch, that’s how many legs they have. After their first molt (which is after their first blood meal), they have eight. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know.

So I left this on the kitchen counter (no, I don’t know why), and the next day I got curious and looked at them with a viewing loupe, and of course they were still alive, and waving their legs around. Why should they be dead? I read somewhere about ticks surviving things like being kept near-freezing for a year--a year--and then being brought to room-temp, and they just pick up like nothing happened. So I folded the sticky sides together, and smunched it all up, like that would fix anything.

Stay tuned, faithful readers, the fall mushroom parade of beauty and edibility will start soon (if I can figure out how to make it rain. Apparently, wishing does not make it so).