Sunday, April 20, 2008, 02:07 PM - Odonates
Folks,
This species has been overlooked in NC in the past several years. Not easy to ID until Giff Beaton came out with his new field guide. I'm sure we'd been seeing them just didn't look early enough in the season for them. Here are some photos for you. Enjoy.
Male
Female
Mated
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( 3 / 124 )Sunday, April 20, 2008, 01:27 PM - Odonates
Folks,
Yesterday Meg and I were walking along a lake in the Sandhills Gamelands, this lake it known for Diminutive Clubtail, Gomphus diminutus. They were flying in fact the only clubtail seen were Diminutive's. Meg found this larva splitting from it's exoskeleton. I took these photos. I'm not 100 % sure of the ID but considering the length of segment 9 it appears to be a Diminutive.
The darkened wings have me a little stumped as well.
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( 3 / 111 )Monday, September 24, 2007, 05:59 PM - Insects
Folks,
We have Moonflower, Ipomoea alba blooming at night on our back porch. Last night the moon was out and making the giant white flowers glow. Meg notices a very large moth nectaring on them from the kitchen window. So I took out the camera and managed one photo of this very large Pink-spotted Hawkmoth. The moonflower bloom is around 4 1/2 to 5 inches across, so you can see how wide the moth's wingspan is.
A month or so ago, I had one of these hawkmoths banging on the patio door glass. I thought someone was knocking.
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( 2.8 / 1074 )Monday, September 24, 2007, 06:19 AM - Butterflies
Folks,
On Sepember 22 our yard had a Mourning Cloak, Nymphalis antiopa flying about and getting into the rotten plums we placed in the garden. These beautiful butterflies emerge in may and go into hiding when the weather is hot. They can live up to 10 months. This one looks pretty good for it's age don't you think.
Back when I used to shoot 35mm slide film my Canon A2 could never capture the yellow fringes and brown just right. Digital cameras these days do a pretty good job of getting the color and exposure just right.
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( 2.9 / 1113 )Wednesday, September 5, 2007, 12:33 PM - Butterflies
Folks,
Every year I put out my melon rinds to attract butterflies. This year has not been a good year for attracting them. One year I got 22 Red-spotted Purples on one papaya half, that was a real good year.
Anyway you'll likely attract Red-spotted Purples, satyrs, emperors and anglewings like commas and Question Marks. Mourning Cloaks also but only during the cooler months, but not usually in July, August and September.
Here is a photo I took today of a Question Mark, Polygonia interrogationis.
Here in the southeastern US you can also find a Question mark during warm spells during the winter on warm sunny days.
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( 3 / 1164 )Monday, September 3, 2007, 06:24 PM - Odonates
Folks,
Each year it becomes harder and harder for me and my friends to get new species of damselflies and dragonflies here in central North Carolina. The Smoky Rubyspot is supposed to be common in mpst of NC, but the state parks database until we found these Smoky Rubyspot had not recent records of them.
I'm thinking the reason these are not found very often is the habitat is very hard to get into. These were located at the out pouring of Gum Swamp lake into a black water creek( pocosin). They perch in the sun along the edge of a stong current on branchs overhanging the water. We were able to search about 40 foot of the creek because we've been in such a bad dought, normally the water level would have given us 25% of the area we searched in. Our goal was to find Blackwater Bluets, missed them.
Below is a female Smoky Rubyspot she posed in bad light for 10 minutes, finally after many many ties I got a fairly good image. The white stigma tells us easily it is a female.
Below is a lightly marked male. I could not get any closer than 5-6 foot to the males and they'd just disappear into the pocosin.
This male Smoky Rubyspot has a little more markings than the last one. I did see one that was very heavily marked.
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