What can I say? The weather has been wonderful with cool mornings and warm days. The kind of days where you wear a sweater to work, but forget to bring it home because it's warm when you leave. (Don't ask me how many sweaters I have at work right now.) While I am still seeing plenty of critters, I am seeing fewer of them. I don't know if they've gone south, or they're off preparing for the impending winter.
But I did notice something that totally fascinated me this week. I saw a skipper butterfly roll up its proboscis. One minute it had it extended and collecting pollen and the next minute, it was rolling it up and hiding it. It was just like one of those party noise makers that unrolls when you blow into it and then rolls back up when you stop. Now if I were like millions of others out there, I would have had my smart phone ready and have a good video to show you. However, I don't have a smart phone and the video on my camera doesn't work right. So you'll just have to take my word for it when you see the pictures below. It was really neat. :)
Here are a few things I saw this week during a Second Look.
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| Dogwood tree. Notice the buds for next spring's blooms next to the berries from this year's blooms. |
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| Sternbergia lutea |
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| A few of the Lily of the Valley berries have been snatched. |
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| Skipper butterfly on sedum. If you look closely, you can see it had its proboscis out in the first picture. In the second picture, you can't see it. |
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| Faithful flowers that have been blooming all summer and are still hanging on. |
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| Saddleback Caterpillar. It turns out that this colorful caterpillar has venomous barbs. Not only will they sting you skin, they can also make you sick. I'm glad I was wearing gloves when I found him. |
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| Female hummingbird. Male hummingbirds leave a few weeks before the females. I don't know if all of the males are gone, but I've only seen females at the feeder. |
I bet the proboscis was fun to see. I "upgraded" from my old phone (even I was embarrassed to whip it out in public, and that kind of thing doesn't usually bother me) to a Tracfone which is capable of getting internet ... but it's soooooooooo slow it eats up all my minutes so I don't bother. Eventually I think I'll get a smartphone because that's the way the world is going, but I'm waiting on that--anyway, all to say that I wouldn't have grabbed my smartphone, either! Sometimes I think it's best to be in the moment without recording everything and posting it on Facebook.
ReplyDeleteI've never seen or heard of a Saddleback Caterpillar, but I'll consider myself warned if I come across one!
Some day I will have a smart phone too, but not quite yet. It's just another expense I'm not ready for at the moment.
DeleteI had never heard of or seen a saddle back caterpillar either. It was pretty spectacular to see. The bright colors are supposed to say, I'm poisonous stay away.
I love colours on that caterpillar - so beautiful! Your photography is really good now :)
ReplyDeleteThe butterfly proboscis was really interesting - I don't think I've ever seen one putting it out before. I would have been all over that with my iphone haha.
The colors on the saddle back were beautiful. The brown in the middle is supposed to look like a saddle and the green is supposed to look like a saddle blanket. Thus the name, saddle back.
DeleteThanks for the compliment of the photos. Sometimes it works out, and sometimes it doesn't. My camera is aggravating these days because a couple of the settings don't work or it gets stuck in one of them. But it still works overall.
Lovely photos as usual!
ReplyDeleteThanks.
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