A week, 10 days have elapsed since I photographed the critters on this page. But the climate has changed. No, at my elevation (5400 ft.), there's been no frost; however, a friend at a slightly higher elevation in Mountain Club has already suffered two frosts! Nonetheless, none of the critters shown here are evident any longer. (No, don't ask what kind of moth or butterfly will emerge from that handsome caterpillar above...)
Strange. One day, all of the sudden, the wild Fremont's pincushion was covered with these black fellows. Ants were tending them, so I presume they are some sort of aphid, though they don't look like any of the black aphids on display at The Google's image site. Within a week, they were gone and the plants didn't look particularly distressed. (If you were to ask me, I'd say these look more like weevils -- but do ants tend weevils?)
Wasp? Bee? Fly? Whatever. He or she is happily harvesting some sort of goody from the goldenrod. By the way, do note that the golden rod's rod consists of many, many tiny sunflowers.
Here's why I was truly pleased with myself one day in late September -- I actually caught a hawk moth doing its thing.
If you look closely, you may be able to see the long, long tongue that it unwinds to sip nectar as it hovers, humming-bird style. According to the folks at
What's That Bug (a wonderful site, by the way) this critter is officially a 2-striped sphinx moth. sheoflittlebrain had more to say about hawk moths over at
The One Acre Wood recently.
Celtic Links: Two of the regular visitors to this site have posted fascinating entries about the ancient Celts. Box Elder photographed the ruins of a Celtic church in northern France, while Olivia tells of
the Celts in the Taunus Mountains of Germany, near Frankfurt. Well worth your time.
A week, 10 days have elapsed since I photographed the critters on this page. But the climate has changed. No, at my elevation (5400 ft.), there's been no frost; however, a friend at a slightly higher elevation in Mountain Club has already suffered two frosts! Nonetheless, none of the critters shown here are evident any longer. (No, don't ask what kind of moth or butterfly will emerge from that handsome caterpillar above...)
Strange. One day, all of the sudden, the wild Fremont's pincushion was covered with these black fellows. Ants were tending them, so I presume they are some sort of aphid, though they don't look like any of the black aphids on display at The Google's image site. Within a week, they were gone and the plants didn't look particularly distressed. (If you were to ask me, I'd say these look more like weevils -- but do ants tend weevils?)
Wasp? Bee? Fly? Whatever. He or she is happily harvesting some sort of goody from the goldenrod. By the way, do note that the golden rod's rod consists of many, many tiny sunflowers.
Here's why I was truly pleased with myself one day in late September -- I actually caught a hawk moth doing its thing.
If you look closely, you may be able to see the long, long tongue that it unwinds to sip nectar as it hovers, humming-bird style. According to the folks at What's That Bug (a wonderful site, by the way) this critter is officially a 2-striped sphinx moth. sheoflittlebrain had more to say about hawk moths over at The One Acre Wood recently.
Celtic Links: Two of the regular visitors to this site have posted fascinating entries about the ancient Celts. Box Elder photographed the ruins of a Celtic church in northern France, while Olivia tells of the Celts in the Taunus Mountains of Germany, near Frankfurt. Well worth your time.
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