Charlotte County Extension Demonstration Garden Revisit

Posted on 2011/12/14 by birds n' bugs

The other day, I was out and about and noticed a lot of cars in the lot at the Extension Demonstration Garden on Florida Avenue.  It turned out to be the local Master Gardeners having a plant and cutting sale.  I didn’t buy anything but did notice that the garden had loads of butterflies flitting about.  While I was chasing them about, I discovered this Milkweed Assassin Bug (  Zelus longipes ) which had managed to snag a Long-Legged Flew (note past tense).  The Long-legged flies are tiny colorful and fast.  I guess the Assassin Bug was just a little quicker though.

   

But, they weren’t what caught my eye.  It was the butterflies.  This Mangrove Skipper ( Phocides pigmalion ) usually has more blue on it’s wings but, this one seems to have gotten some wear.

   

Another Skipper (Brazilian?) was specializing in the red flowers today as was a Cloudless Sulphur ( Phoebis sennae ).  Click on the pictures for a larger view and compare the antennae and you can see the typical little ‘crochet hook’ at the end of the skippers antenna.

   

As another comparison, this Moth Yellow-collared Scape moth ( Cisseps fulvicollis ) shows the combed fernlike antennae of the moth.

 For the technically minded, these were all taken with a Nikon D90 using a 105mm f2.8 VR Micro-Nikkor and an SB-800 flash mounted on the camera.

Posted in Bug, Park | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Fruit flies

Posted on 2011/10/25 by birds n' bugs

I have an orange tree in my yard which normally produces really good juice oranges.  This year, I’m not going to get much of a crop because the fruit is splitting and the flies are getting all that good sweet juice before they are really ripe.  Part of this comes from a lack of rain early in the season followed by a lot of rain recently.  Yesterday, I found two types sharing the wealth.

The red eyed ones are called Vinegar Flies – Zaprionus indianus according to the answers I got from BugGuide.net when I asked for help.  I’m not sure of the one with the striped wings.  In fact, it actually looks like a bee but, a very small one if that is the case.

Here are a couple more views of the same subjects.     The vinegar flies were actually burrowing deep into the orange while the striped wing one was content to drink juice from the surface.

 

Posted in animal behavior, Bug | Tagged | Leave a comment

A morning walk in Ponce De Leon Park, Punta Gorda

Posted on 2011/10/15 by birds n' bugs

This morning dawned nice and cool, perfect for a walk in Ponce De Leon Park.  It wasn’t too early for the fishermen and I found this fellow and his sons casting nets off the beach.  Along the seawall, the Morning Glories (Ipomoea purpurea) were in full bloom.
   
Along the nature path I found the usual Red Mangroves (Rhizophora mangle)and you could see the propagules beginning to sprout after taking root. And, of course the usual plethora of Mangrove Crabs in the trees.
    But my favorite find was this nice Yellow Crowned Night Heron (Nyctanassa violacea) who sat grooming itself on the boardwalk through the mangroves for 15 minutes or so.  It actually let me get to within about 4 feet of it before hopping down into the mangroves to try and snatch a few of the crabs for breakfast.

Posted in Bird, Other Animals, Park - Ponce de Leon, Wildflower | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Grasshopper camoflage

Posted on 2011/10/07 by birds n' bugs

While in South Carolina, I took a walk by a pond at our stop in Bluffton.  I stood still for a while just watching for unusual movement and was able to find these two very well camoflaged grasshoppers.  I haven’t got the names on them yet.

   

I only saw the brown one at all as it flew by me and I had to crank the contrast up a bit to make it clearly visible in this picture.  You really need to click on the brown one and look closely.  What appear to be it’s legs are actually the shadows of it’s legs.  The actual leg is so close to the color and texture of the sand that it is difficult to see even when enlarged at high resolution.

Posted in animal behavior, Bug | Tagged , | Leave a comment

A few shots from Myrtle Beach SC

Posted on 2011/10/06 by birds n' bugs

We had to make a trip up to the Carolinas for a few days and stopped along the way to visit friends.  We were in a beachfront suite one day and I caught a couple of decent shots from the balcony.


As I looked out over the balcony, the first thing that caught my eye was the black chairs below me with a hard sun overhead. The shadows were continuations of the table and chairs and looked pretty interesting to me.

I was up early the next morning. There weren’t enough clouds to give the sky any drama but, the horizontal bands were a nice contrast with the low tide beach lines with just enough walkers to show the scale.

Without the color of the sky, it was a study in greys as a family walked along.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 1 Comment

A brief history of paint at the Punta Gorda Woman’s Club

Posted on 2011/09/15 by birds n' bugs

The Punta Gorda Woman’s Club is a historic building in our little town.  It was used for a long time as the central hall for a lot of functions.  Time has passed and there is a new conference center a few hundred yards away but, the hall still serves the community well.

This often means taping up decorations for parties and events and, unfortunately, that takes a toll on the paint.  The stage is elevated with a nice set of footlights.  This turns


out to be a favorite place to tape banners and gets a lot of wear and tear. Over the years it has had it’s share of touchup and repainting. It was time to start over so, the plan is to strip all the paint and start over with varnish on bare wood.

  

The present top layer was a dark brown which covered a lighter brown which was itself on top of a white coat.  As they say in the TV infomercials though “WAIT THERE’S MORE”.  Beneath those three layers were several more in two shades of green, beige and one that looked like blue but could have been another green.  At the bottom, an old checkered varnish.  Once it’s stripped we will be back to the original fine grained wood and finish.

  

As you can see in the first picture, we also discovered an antique thumbtack.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 1 Comment

Benefit Car Show

Posted on 2011/08/30 by birds n' bugs

The Punta Gorda Historical Society is raising funds to move a house to our history park for use as a hands on museum for kids.  The local chapter of the  Veteran Motor Car Club of America kindly sponsored a car show at Muscle Car City, a real museum of hot cars here in Punta Gorda.  The cars on show were eclectic ranging from Model A Fords to a 1931 Alfa Romeo to more muscle cars and corvettes of various vintages.  Not all of them were restored though.  My favorite shot from the day was this rusting tailgate on a pickup truck ready for restoration.


I thought some of the contrasts were interesting. For instance, the difference in the interior treatment of this 50s American car and a Rolls Royce of the same vintage.

   

These and a few more shots from the show are at the PGHS events page.  I always like to check out the Street Rods so here is a final shot.
I was actually surprised at the number of classic cars I had owned. Unfortunately, I never waxed the engine compartment and traded them all in on my next car. I guess that’s what makes the survivors classics 🙂

Posted in Event, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Spider Lily – Hymenocallis liriosme

Posted on 2011/08/19 by birds n' bugs

On the same trip to Ponce Park that I saw the spider webs in Spider Love I also found some Spider lilies on the shoreline in full bloom.  You don’t usually get to see them looking this good since the flowers only last an hour or so before beginning to fade.

You can see the two freshest flowers in this image with an earlier pair already wilting or wilted.  At the base of the floral group you can see the seeds forming.  After a few days, the flowers are all gone and the seed heads begin getting all the nourishment from the roots.

In time, these will dry up and be carried away by the water or feeding birds.

Posted in Park - Ponce de Leon, Wildflower | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Spider Love

Posted on 2011/08/18 by birds n' bugs

A couple of weeks ago on the Ponce de Leon Park Nature Path, I happened across some fine examples of spider love.  These orb weavers ( I believe they are Venusta Orchard Spiders – Leucauge venusta) typically spin a classic spiral web as seen here.


But, when it’s mating season things change a lot.  The web building becomes both more and less organized.  I am not sure of how to check genders on spiders but, generally, the female is larger.  So, the following is entirely supposition on my part.  While the female spins a very regular screenlike web.  It is a variant of the normal spiral web but is never the entire circle.  Just a very dense crosshatch as can be seen below.  If you look closely you can see the underlying, normally scaled, web pattern with the crosshatch filling it.

In the meantime, several males can be seen spinning random chaotic webs in the nearby area.  It’s like they are battling to see who gets to mate with the female.  They don’t actually fight each other, simply spin as much web material as possible.  Since spiders can eat webs to replace the material, this may be a way to provide the impending baby spiders with something to eat when they are first born.  Since chaotic webs don’t provide prey location information as orb webs do then this may also be a way to catch food for the young.  I believe the female also incorporates some parts of the chaotic webs into the suspension line for the egg sacs.
In this picture you can see the rectangular grid web that the female had been spinning while the males were spinning randomly. Once a single male is left, mating takes place on the females web. It gets somewhat torn up by this activity. The picture above was taken while the mating was taking place. After mating, the female first creates a very strong suspension line for the egg sacs and then puts her fertilized eggs into a couple of spherical eggs sacs that hang like a spring of beads.

After that, she rest for a while and departs leaving the eggs to develop and hatch on their own.

Posted in animal behavior, Park - Ponce de Leon, Spider | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Hathaway Park Wildflowers

Posted on 2011/08/09 by birds n' bugs

During the visit I reported on yesterday, I also admired the flowers that the recent rains had brought out.  The growing season is in full swing and some of the plants are already setting seeds for next year.  Here is a Coral Bean Plant and a Beautyberry which are putting some bright color into the greenery.

   

I’m still trying to figure out what this yellow flower is but, the blue one on the right is a Sandhill Dayflower – Commelina erecta.

   

Thanks to a comment from Steve Schwartzman who has a wildflower blog at
http://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com the yellow flower has been identified as a Partridge Pea – Chamaecrista fasciculata.

Thank you Steve.

Posted in Park, Wildflower | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments