No nice pictures this time as I only had my phone on me, but my favourite observation of the past few days I had during playground time
There was some suspiciously wet looking patch in the sand pit.. and a lot of flies liked to inspect it.. which attracted a field digger wasp to go on a hunt there.. she would just sit on top of this patch, waiting for flies to come, sneak up on it and BÄM! .. she was successful almost everytime. She just failed on the larger flies.. she then would transport them to her nest somewhere and come back for the next hunt. She got 4 or 5 flies this way, until a branch from the nearby tree put a shadow over the soaked patch.. she only sat there a while longer and then was done for the day it seemed..
Saw Wood Ducks gnawing at the wood and bark of a tree, presumably looking for burrowing larvae. I think this behavior must be pretty rare as I had never seen this, could not find any documentation online of this, and reached out to Wood Duck expert Gary Hepp who says he has never seen it either (and suggested that they are probably quite young, which would explain a prioritization of protein).
To be honest, this is probably the most annoying behaviour of the week rather than my favourite. It is one that I admire though. The pictures of this White-tailed Eagle are awful, because it was so far away. We sat for over an hour in the hide, hoping that when it flew off we’d get a better view. A mixed flock of Corvids were equally keen for the Eagle to move, but whatever they did, it just sat there. Eventually we gave up and continued our walk around the reserve. We got to the next hide, still it didn’t move. We kept our eye on the Eagle’s tree as we walked all the way back to the car park. For over three hours we monitored it, but other than an occasional twist of the neck, it didn’t move once. The Eagle demonstrated amazing levels of patience that we couldn’t compete with. I wish it hadn’t though.
I had been iNatting as part of a Big Bug BioBlitz and was following a bee as it landed on some goldenrod. I took a couple of photos and then BAM a crab spider grabbed it out of nowhere. I didn’t even see it was there until that - and clearly neither did the bee.
Here is a Tetragnathus stretch spider who zipped behind a grass blade to hide from me, just holding on with two legs so their tips would be the only thing showing in front. Great work honestly, but unfortunately the setting sun showed his silhouette.
Watching an American Woodcock dance while looking for food very entertaining. Same with a Wilson’s Snipe and American Dipper. The American Dipper can also swim under water and it doesn’t even mind when it is freezing cold.
They all do this little dance where they bob their butts up and down while feeling the ground with there feet. They seem to get a rhythm going. Super fun to watch.
Can anyone tell me why the plant in this video that I took is wiggling around?? It was moving back and fourth steadily for a few seconds before I started filming and I was suprised to see nothing external from the leaf was causing it.
While thats what I initially thought, it moved back and fourth for quite awhile before I began filming and I didnt see anything when looking closer at the base of the plant. Else, I would have an observation of it!
On the theme of chowing down, I recently spotted this Long-tailed Aphideater busy on a milkweed plant.
I have seen this aphid behaviour before. With other aphid eaters (like ladybugs). They never seem to make any effort to escape (some even climb right up to the jaws.
How did the aphids ever survive to the present? That made me think of how domesticating a species, whether by humans, or other species – ants, in this case, probably breeds out the flight response from the domesticated species. Most of the time, they have their guarding ‘shepherds’ but not always, or the ant species on guard is just no match for the large or quick moving predator (ants punch way above their weight for self-defense. They have a team rallying scent chemical they can deploy that instantly rallies their sisters, and makes them dangerous to a lot of predator bugs much larger than just one ant alone.
But I’m just guessing here as to why the aphids don’t even try to escape.
Then my mind wandered into the Doomisphere, thinking about how dependent our species has become on technology to protect us from all kinds of predation. We still have flight and fight for severe physical threats, but I’m not entirely sure about our ability to defend ourselves against the new intelligences emerging. It seems like we too may be walking our way into some kind of self-imposed domesticated oblivion.
Today a very old observation of mine resurfaced, so it is not technically (observed) from this week, but I still think this one is so cool that I want to share it.. at least it got interacted with this week
I did observe those wasps constantly flying in to a wooden compost frame and gnawing down on the wood. One can see how active they where by looking at the brighter parts of the wood - the areas where they had already taken material from. They use the wood material to build their paper nests and appearantly they where working on a huuuge wasp mansion
