A couple of unusual and interesting moths in my area are the closely related hummingbird and snowberry clearwing moths. Both fly during the daytime, and hover in front of flowers they visit in a way that resembles a hummingbird sipping nectar. They also (as their name implies) both have large clear patches on their wings.
When I first spotted one of these moths (years ago now) I identified it as a snowberry clearwing. After that I began to assume all the large, clear winged moths I saw were the snowberry clearwing, but recently, going through and trying to identify various things I’d photographed, I realized I couldn’t remember what the difference between the two species was. I looked them up again, and realized that I’ve actually seen and photographed both (and there are actually a couple more less common species I haven’t seen).
The most obvious difference between the two species is that the snowberry clearwing has a black stripe running through the white patch on the head and ‘chest’ that meets the front pair of legs, which are also black, while on the hummingbird clearwing that patch and the front pair of legs are all consistently white. There are some subtle differences in the wings of the two species, but otherwise, both show a fair amount of variety in their colors and markings.
Though I think I’ve seen the snowberry clearwing most often, the best pictures I’ve gotten yet are of the hummingbird clearwing. But whichever species they are, they’re always beautiful and fun to see.
Hummingbird clearwing foraging on bee balmSnowberry clearwing on milkweedSnowberry clearwing on oregano flowers. This is one of my older photos but it shows the stripe quite well.Hummingbird clearwing on bee balmHummingbird clearwing on buttonbush
Solomon’s seals’ most obvious difference from the false Solomon’s seals (maianthemums) is that their flowers hang from the central stem instead of growing from the tip of the stem. I’ve found these sprinkled around the woods, but they definitely don’t grow in thick patches like some of the other wildflowers.
Solomon’s seal flowers with wild geraniums in the background.
Last spring I noticed that the leaves look quite interesting when they’re unfurling, which actually made them stand out even more from the maianthemums for me.
I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to all the tiny holes in the sand around the seasonal pond area until little flickers of movement inside the holes caught my attention. (For some sense of scale in the photo, what looks like little pebbles are grains of sand.) They were only ever in my peripheral vision; whatever creature I was seeing was apparently very fast and skittish.
Unable to see properly what kept darting back into the holes, I eventually resorted to crouching over ones I’d seen recent movement in with my camera and holding very still… and waiting. I had to have my camera focused on the spot they would emerge before they came out as any tiny movement would cause them to disappear. After a bit of patience (and physical discomfort) I managed to get a couple clear shots of the heads of the creatures poking out of the hole… but they didn’t look like anything I recognized.
I thought they might be the immature form of some insect, but it took me quite a bit of searching before I managed to find something that looked similar… a tiger beetle larva! I don’t know how to tell what species of tiger beetle just from the head of the larvae, but it is quite likely that these were bronzed tiger beetle larvae, because I’d seen quite a few adults of that species in the same spot earlier that spring.
The other interesting thing about looking up pictures of the larvae was that I realized that it was just the head and thorax that is so well developed at this stage, and the rest of the body looks more grub-like. I had thought, looking at them in my pictures, that they looked like little ambush predators with those large mandibles (added to the fact that they didn’t ever seem to come all the way out of their burrows), and it turns out that’s exactly what they are. They pop out and grab passing insects (or other small animals), which is also why their front end is so much more developed at that stage. (The adults are predators too, but they chase down their prey.)
‘Very fast and skittish’ is also a pretty good description of adult tiger beetles, and this is usually the easiest angle to get of them… but I actually like how well it shows off the beetle’s markings!
On the day we left New Mexico it had snowed overnight, and the mountains were cloaked in clouds when we got up. As the morning went on, the clouds started to dissipate. I went outside for a bit to stretch my legs before getting on the road for most of the day, and decided to point my telephoto lens at the snow covered mountain, and wound up getting what turned out to be some of my favorite photos from the trip. There are bits of cloud still caught up in the mountain in these and snow dusted trees.
Crop from the first photoCrop from the third photoCrop from the sixth photo
The past year turned out to be a good one for getting wasp photos for me, particularly this past August. When the first of the goldenrod started to bloom these plants turned into magnets for pollinators of all sorts, but I particularly noticed a lot of wasps, not just in numbers of individuals, but in diversity of species as well.
Before that, wasps had been congregating on the spotted horse mint / spotted bee balm (both common names for monarda punctata) in the pollinator garden by the house. I was having fun seeing how many different kinds I could spot as well as just appreciating their many different shapes and colors… but as I realized going through them later, even some very similar looking ones turned out to be different species.
I wanted to show off in this post some of the wasp variety I’ve been able to photograph through the years, though of course what I’ve managed to photograph is just a tiny sampling of what exists (there are some truly wild looking wasps out there, of which I’ve managed to photograph only a few). Also some of these photos are ones I’m more satisfied with than others.
paper wasp on goldenrod
The northern paper wasp (polistes fuscatus) has a significant amount of variety packed into one species. Their varied colors and markings make them fun subjects, plus I was starting to notice what seemed to be the same individuals hanging out on the same flower patches each day when I was doing really regular wasp walks.
This one was especially colorful.carrot wasp (gasteruption) on goldenrodThis is a type of oak gall wasp laying eggs in an oak bud. Oaks are hosts to an impressive number of gall wasps, as well as other gall making insects which is part of why oaks are considered such important members of their ecosystems.five banded thynnid wasp on flat-topped goldenrodThe common name of this wasp is the gold-marked thread-waisted wasp (which sounds more like a description of the wasp than a name… but at least it’s an accurate description!) These are certainly interesting looking creatures, but I’m not particularly happy with most of the pictures of them I have so far. Fortunately they don’t seem to be a rare species so hopefully I’ll be able to get some better pictures at some point.Ichneumon wasp on my finger.grass carrying wasp on flat-topped goldenrodThis tachytes wasp (a genus known as sand-loving or green-eyed wasps) was quite mesmerizing, with both the green eyes and silvery stripes on the wasp’s abdomen being very shiny and reflective. The stripes even seemed to change color depending on the angle and lighting. These were also fast moving wasps, which probably exaggerated the reflective characteristics and made the wasp seem to shimmer in the sun. It also made it that much trickier to get good photos…Unidentified wasp on New England aster.The four-toothed mason wasp is a fairly common species, and I’ve photographed them before, but this particular little guy gave me the opportunity to get the best pictures I have of this species.The same wasp (I have quite a few pictures of him).Great golden digger wasp.bald faced hornet enjoying the goldenrod.This wasp was so tiny you might assume it’s a fruit fly if you see one… and this isn’t even as tiny as wasps get!Great black digger wasp on swamp milkweed.This mason wasp (euodynerus crypticus) may not have a common name, and there doesn’t seem to be much information about them out there. What little I was able to find piqued my interest, though; apparently it may be a social wasp, which I hadn’t heard of in the mason wasp family before. In any case, this species was regularly visiting the spotted bee balm, so I got to see them regularly for a little while.Some sort of ichneumon wasp on the back of my hand. I found this wasp halfway through December!Rusty spider wasp on spotted bee balm.
Many species of solitary wasps, like this rusty spider wasp, specialize in hunting a specific type of prey that they will cache in a nest for their offspring. In the case of spider wasps, they specialize (as their name implies) in hunting spiders. I noticed one of these wasps hanging around the entrance to the garage one day, and then she disappeared into the garage for a while and I lost track of her, only to later spot her dragging a huge spider out!
Black giant ichneumon wasp on a dead tree.four-banded stink bug wasp excavating a nest in sand. This wasp is also named for what they specialize in hunting.
Another gall wasp.Great black digger wasp on spotted bee balm.A close up of the black giant ichneumon wasp. These wasp are a challenge to photograph because they’re just so long. They don’t fit in the frame well.Myzinum maculatum is another wasp that doesn’t seem to have a common name, but they are closely related to the other thynnid wasps in this post.Common thread-waisted wasp. I think this wasp had an injured wing, sadly.Lobed mason wasp on goldenrod.Great golden digger wasp on spotted bee balm.Four banded stink bug wasp on flat-topped goldenrod.I found this cuckoo wasp at a local park. When I’ve seen cuckoo wasps before they’ve been pretty skittish, so I was happy to finally find one that was cooperative!This picture shows the cuckoo wasp (the same one from the previous picture) between my knuckles, which shows how small this one was.
I’m looking forward to seeing what kinds of wasps I can find this year!
From a distance the green algae growing in the wet pondish area last spring looked kind of foamy and not very interesting, but through the macro lens it took on an entirely different character and I could see that the ‘foam’ was made up of tiny algae filaments trapping lots of little air bubbles. While I was taking pictures of the algae I spotted a tiny springtail just walking over the water which I made sure to get in some photos as well. It turned out I got a couple more springtails in my photos that I didn’t see at the time (it was kind of hard to see what I was doing much of the time anyway; I was leaning out over the water to reach the algae but I couldn’t really lean far enough to look through the viewfinder properly most of the time). I thought the results were super interesting looking, and I ended up returning to it to take more photos.
SpringtailClose up of the springtail
This springtail only appeared in one photo and, amazingly, in perfect focus (3rd photo is the uncropped version)
In early spring when trees are just starting to leaf out, a few tree species have leaf buds that look quite a bit like flowers. Possibly the most dramatic example of this I’ve seen are the hickory trees (and the shagbarks in particular). Their buds can be quite large, which adds to the effect.
Ironically, the actual flowers of hickory trees don’t look nearly as showy as these buds; they have catkins and tiny, not very noticeable female flowers (which I haven’t seen since they’re high up in mature trees).
I first noticed this a few years ago now, but it wasn’t until a couple years ago that I was able to start getting some decent pictures. (It helps to have some young saplings that are easier to reach…)
The young, just unfurling leaves look pretty interesting too, with a layer of fur and tiny beads of what I think might be some sort of sap or resin.
I thought the leaves on this sapling were particularly pretty with the maroon color between the leaflet midribs.This one is a close up (crop) of the previous picture.
Crab spiders like this one usually hang out on (or in) flowers, so it was interesting to see this one on a freshly opened hickory bud.The outside of the bud is fuzzy and feels kind of silky if you touch it.
There’s always so much out there to discover at each time of year and things seem to happen especially quickly in the spring. You have to keep an eye out or you’ll miss it!
Towards the end of May (roughly) is when all the spring ephemerals in the woods flower each year. It is an impressive display, but it is fairly brief. (You could say it lives up to the name ephemeral, I suppose.) I wanted to make a post about it, but with multiple years worth of photos, it was turning out fairly long, so I decided to make it a little series instead, and just spotlight one or two of the different species I’ve observed per post.
Wild Geranium
Wild geraniums are the most numerous of the spring ephemerals in our woods, which is part of their charm; it would be hard not to be impressed by the way they quite literally carpet large areas of the woods. I’ve tried many times over the years to capture a good sense of this in my photos, but although I’ve made some improvements and gotten some good photos, I’ve come to the conclusion that nothing will quite compare to seeing it in person. But that doesn’t stop me from trying to do the best I can with it.
Like quite a few native wildflowers, wild geraniums have at least one specialist pollinator: the cranesbill miner bee (cranesbill is another name for the wild geranium). Being specialist pollinators means that these bees will only use wild geranium pollen for feeding their offspring, though the adults may visit other flowers for nectar.
This is probably a cranesbill miner bee (I am at least certain that this is some type of miner bee), but miner bees can be very difficult to identify to the species.Of course wild geraniums also provide nectar and pollen to a variety of other non-specialized pollinators too, like this agapostemon (sweat) bee.
This certainly won’t be the last you see of the wild geraniums in this series; they show up alongside the other ephemerals in many of their photos, too.
Although it mostly wasn’t super cold while I was in New Mexico, there were still some interesting ice formations to be found in the mountains, particularly around streams. This was partly because it was colder the higher in the mountains you got, but also because the temperature differences between day and night were more extreme there.
This is what happens when a waterfall freezes (partially, anyway). Though you can’t really see it in a still photo, there was water flowing a bit behind this wall of ice.This is the center of the waterfall in the previous photo. It was still flowing through the center, but there was a chunk of ice in the middle of the flowing part that looked a bit like an explosion of ice, which was causing the liquid water to splash around pretty wildly. It’s kind of hard to tell in this photo what water is frozen and what water is just in active motion.This one’s a close up of the wall of ice in the first photo.I think this picture has interesting contrast with the smooth, rounded ice and frothy bubbles.More ice and bubbles.These icicle-like formations were on the underside of a log over a churned up bit of river. I’m guessing they formed from the spray of the river running to the bottom of the log and freezing before they could drip back down.I found these tiny ice formations on twigs after climbing up the same rock where I also found some of the lichens in my lichen post. I was pretty excited to find these, since I haven’t seen any ice formations quite like this at home. When I found these, and for quite a while afterwards, I wondered what the conditions were that made it possible for these to form. Recently, I stumbled across something that may be an explanation.Certain ice formations occur due to specific interactions with plants or fungi. I recently learned that there are a few different plant species that create ice formations when their sap freezes and bursts out of the sides of the stem, which is actually sort of what appears to be happening in this picture in particular… But on the other hand I wasn’t able to find information about any of these plants being in New Mexico. It would help if I could see this spot during the summer.Another angle of the tiny ice formation.A close up of the first ice formation.
One spring I was fascinated by these tiny, just-emerged oak leaves I found on the many oak saplings along the edge of the woods. To me they looked like tiny felt crafts. They were actually tiny enough to be tricky to photograph.
Bright red, fuzzy leaves don’t seem to be a characteristic of any specific oak species; they could have to do with environmental conditions, but I wasn’t able to find much information about it. Plus, I don’t know if what I found was talking about leaves that were as tiny as the ones I found. They certainly grew out of their fuzzy red stage extremely quickly.
These leaves are only a couple days older than the others and still quite fuzzy but they only have a hint of the red at the edges of the leaves.
The undersides of a couple leaves just emerging from the bud.A detail crop of one of the leaves.A wider view of the emerging leaves.
I was able to spot bright red leaves like this again this past spring so I do know it wasn’t just a one-year oddity. I’m pretty sure at least some of these are burr oak, but it’s hard to tell for sure what they all were at this stage and there may have been multiple species with leaves like this. (I’m pretty sure these are all from the white oak group, though.) I’m still not quite sure yet how common this might be, but I could see it being easy to overlook, as tiny as the leaves are and if they’re on mature trees they’d be up well out of sight.
