Fall

Top Photo: A female monarch butterfly sips nectar from sunflower. Fall is here. It’s September and fall is all around us. Birds and butterflies are migrating, late season flowers are blooming, seeds are nearly ready to cut loose into the wind, and fruit is on the vine. It’s even a bit cooler outside than it’s been the past few weeks. Here’s a group of photos of what’s going on outside, in case you missed it because of the heat. AnRead more

Potter Wasp

A hot, humid, and quiet day and a potter wasp has secured a looper caterpillar for its “pot” nest chamber. The wasp descended on the caterpillar as it was looping along the path in front of Into The Mist in Catch the Wind. I was lucky to be there when it happened. Potter wasps are solitary wasps, which means they nest alone, not in colonial gatherings as do some burrowing wasps or in collective hives as do yellowjackets, paper wasps, orRead more

Potter Wasps, Glow Worms, and A Well Balanced Turtle

I noticed an odd growth on one of our juvenile leptoceratops on the Dino Trail. The growth was located just before the eye. Since our dinosaurs are not actually alive I reasoned the growth to be of “outside” origin, not arising from the dinosaur itself. In fact, I knew right away what it was. A tiny black and white wasp had built this equally tiny clay pot to protect its young within while it hatches from its egg, eats and grows throughRead more

Bugs on Milk Weed, Worms in Webs, a Potter, a Jumping Spider, and a Robber

Large Milkweed Bugs have hatched out as there were many nymphs on the Butterfly Weed in Catch the Wind during the first week of August. This was only a few days after seeing both Large and Small Milkweed Bugs mating and inspecting this plant. Seven days later the nymphs began to take on some of the characteristics of the adults. Fall Webworms have been at work on the Museum’s trees for a month or more. These caterpillars construct their webRead more