Top Photo: Eastern Phoebe. Eastern phoebes can be seen in every month of the year in central North Carolina. Here at the museum, they nest under the boardwalk each spring/summer and are present in all but the coldest months of the year, although some years I see them regularly throughout the four seasons. The phoebe above is in fresh fall plumage. You can see the distinctive greenish belly and chin on this newly molted bird. The green tint will soonRead more
Posts filed in: Insects
Yellow Flowers, Gray Frogs, and Green Caterpillars.
Top Photo: Crownbeard. Crownbeard is a local herbaceous composite, meaning it grows in the area, has no woody stems or branches and has both disk and ray flowers. I refer to it as the unkempt, or messy sunflower. The flowers seem never to be complete. The ray flowers are uneven in shape, and in most cases are missing many petals Yellow crownbeard (Verbesina occidentalis) is common in the piedmont and can be found along roadsides, edges, and water courses. IRead more
Caterpillars Eating Elm Leaves
Top Photo: Polygonia interrogationis on Ulmus. The caterpillars in these photos are question marks (Polygonia interrogationis). They’re butterfly caterpillars. Looking at the photos you may think they’re named for the shape they sometimes assume when disturbed. Not so. They are, in fact, named after the punctuation mark (?) but not because of the way the caterpillars scrunch up when hassled. No, question marks are named for markings on the underside of the adult butterfly’s hindwings which are roughly the shapeRead more
A Prominent Caterpillar
Top Photo: Black-spotted prominent caterpillar. Ranger Becca radioed me saying she had located a couple of caterpillars munching on a plant in our Into the Mist exhibit in Catch the Wind. I went out to see if I could identify the beasts. I knew right away the caterpillars were a species of prominent, they had tail-like projections on their posterior ends. Many of the prominents have these so-called tails which are actually modified anal prolegs. If you’re having trouble remembering,Read more
Sawfly Feast
Top Photo: Sawfly larva on oak leaf (note eight pair of prolegs). I walk by the tree numerous times a day. I knew it was a white oak and I knew it had some sort of leaf miners or skeletonizers actively feeding on the leaves. The leaves were turning a lighter shade of pale from their centers outward. I was tempted to find out what was going on with the tree but didn’t act on it. I didn’t act onRead more
The Fake Milkweed Bug
Top Photo: Mystery bugs. Just outside the doors leading from Play To Learn in the main building here at the museum, and on your right, is a small garden planted with native prairie plants. I stop here when I pass through Gateway Park to watch goldfinches pick the seeds from the various herbaceous plants in the garden. And, there’s a large pokeweed in the center of the garden which attracts fruit eating birds. Catbirds seem especially fond of poke berries.Read more
The Wasp and the Caterpillar
Top Photo: caterpillar lying on its side next to burrow entrance. As I walked past the Pollinator Garden which is just above the Butterfly House Rain Garden, I notice a green object hurriedly angling across the path. It looked like a caterpillar, but it had an odd movement, a side to side wiggle, and speed which most caterpillars don’t display while moving along the ground, or anywhere else. There are a handful of swift moving caterpillars, but none quite thisRead more
The Results
Top Photo: A very fresh narrow-mouthed toad. Back in July when rainy days and nights reigned over the wetlands I would hear the bleating, lamb-like call of narrow-mouthed toads calling from in and around the wet areas of our campus. The toads were here to mate. The results are in. Ranger Tim, on duty in Hideaway Woods, spotted a freshly morphed narrow-mouthed toad along the path there. They are very small. Newly morphed toads are about 10 mm, give orRead more
The Cicada and the Spider
Top Photo: Cicada caught in orb weaver’s web. It’s fall, and orb weavers are becoming more and more conspicuous on trails and paths, around gardens, back porches and decks. The other morning while I walked the outdoor loop here at the museum, I noticed a cicada struggling mightily about twenty feet above the path near the entrance to the boardwalk. It had gotten itself caught in the web of an orb weaver. Sticky stuff, those webs. The cicada was flappingRead more