Seeing as this is a rainy day,( thankfully!, our bedding plants have been drying up!) I have had to resort to my photo
Its always exciting when I see that Common Primrose are in bloom for among the petals of its blossom I look for a beautiful pink treasure and that's what I had found last week, a tiny pink and white moth nestled snugly within the petals of a Common Primrose blossom. I cut off the blossom and placed it with the moth within in an insect box that I often carry with me so that I could take some close closeups ( macros) of the moth.
I had been wondering where this little moth was this season as I had not seen it previously. Early last evening I had taken a drive to a nearby Common Primrose plant to release a Primrose moth that I had captured earlier in the day and it was then that I had spied this clearwing hummingbird moth feeding on some Milkweed in bloom.
I remember being thrilled when I found a Zebra butterfly in Florida in 2000. Wow! Having left our New Brunswick winter of snow and ice behind what a wonder Florida was! My camera was in joyful overload!
We have a few sparrows around Bird Alley this morning and I know some of the Sparrows are Song Sparrows and maybe one or two are Chipping Sparrows. Also some of the sparrows are hungry babies as can be observed in the following open mouthed sparrow picture shown below.
The joys of nature are many and often are so awe inspiring and surprising! This morning I went out with my macro lens on my camera to see what I could find, Just across the street from my house on a public building that leaves its moth attracting outside lights on all night I found a Rosy Maple Moth on the outside wall of the building. When I first saw this species several years ago I was astounded with its beautiful pink colour... I found it unbelievable! And I loved it!.... And every year since I always watch for this moth to appear. Below are photos of what I have found this morning!
For a few years now we have watched a stray gray and white cat hunting through our property. We used to discourage its presence by shouting at it to get lost and be gone. It used to be that to connect with it by looking it in its eye would be enough to cause it to run away. then somehow this winter we got into the habit of leaving some cat food in a bowl on our back step and we found that this stray cat would appear each day and empty the bowl of cat food we set out.
However, we will not abandon Daryl as we think that has happened previously and so we continue to watch for Daryl and we feed him each day.
We think Daryl has endured a few scraps now and then. He is much thinner looking than he looked during the winter, and he has a recent scratch on his nose. My husband brushes Daryl and he looks much better these days. He has a gentle thankful look in his eyes when he greets me each morning with his regular , ": you got any food for me?" Meow. Y is for yellow.Yellow is a very prevalent colour in nature, so much so that many species in nature carry as their identification a yellow hued nomenclature. I have included a few examples below to illustrate my point.
The all important beginning of life: eggs! My husband spied these fascinating
June is the month to see snapping Turtles laying their eggs. This scene is becoming quite repetitive for me.
X is for Xanthous and also for Xanthotype Moth
Xanthous is a Greek adjective used to describe a yellow colour. I read in a couple of places that xanthous colour was that of the yellow of an egg yolk. Seen below the yellow yoke of a freshly boiled egg cut in half for my morning's breakfast.
A few years ago I used to see a Muskrat often swimming in the river. I knew the location of its home and knew where and when to watch for it. However I hadn't seen one for years until last Saturday when I saw one swimming in a pond where I had gone to look for Snapping Turtles. I was pleased and surprised to see it swimming in the water. I didn't get too many pictures of it as it disappeared as soon as it it became aware of me and my interest in it swimming along. A Muskrat is a semi-aquatic
This morning I left my house around 7a.m, just after my first coffee of the day. I drove to the location where I had seen a Snapper laying eggs on Saturday but didn't see anything new there. I got out of my car and looked down onto the river shore for emerging turtles but didn't see any there either, so I drove down to check out the lagoon area and when approaching the fenced in area around the water I saw a turtle headed toward the water. Hmmmm, was it a small sized Snapper? or a large Painted Turtle? The picture I took revealed its identity. The yellow lines on its neck and the reddish tint on the bottom shell told me it was a Painted Turtle!
