Some piccies
Jul. 31st, 2007 09:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumSummer is a time of easy photography. Birds, flowers, mushrooms and bugs are all going about their business with great vim and vigor.
Today I saw a most amazing mantis. Tomorrow I intend to take pictures. The usual run of mantids here is all imported stuff, the Carolina, Chinse, and European. California has a native (Stagomantis californica) but it lives in the Foothills of the Sierras (if I've interpreted the literature correctly). The Carolina is brown, the other two the "classic" green (classic is in quotes because mantids are amazingly diverse. I kept one in my my hotel room one year in Sierra Vista, Ariz. It was a wonderful shade of cigarette ash grey. There are some which look like orchids).
This little one is a sort of cross between charcoal, and oak bark, with stripes/checking on the grasping arms.
So today was a three mantis day. I released about 600 this year, and have been counting them as I see them. There are some which live in the Anaheim peppers, A carolina which lived in the lavender, before the lavender died [the Huntington says it was the January frost, with a delayed effect], a large Carolina [almost certainly one I didn't release, as it was a good five-six inches long, and that more than a month ago] one which has been hanging out in the orchid/maidenhair fern/mouse houses; I saw it eating a fly today. That was the first time I've seen one eating, in the wild.
This one
has been hanging out in the gourds.
Here
is a female blossom. The next is the same, in B&W.
In the back yard I have puffball mushrooms in the grapes.
The grapes themselves look something like this
And as a sepia treatment
Clicking on the pictures will, as usual, link to a larger image.
Today I saw a most amazing mantis. Tomorrow I intend to take pictures. The usual run of mantids here is all imported stuff, the Carolina, Chinse, and European. California has a native (Stagomantis californica) but it lives in the Foothills of the Sierras (if I've interpreted the literature correctly). The Carolina is brown, the other two the "classic" green (classic is in quotes because mantids are amazingly diverse. I kept one in my my hotel room one year in Sierra Vista, Ariz. It was a wonderful shade of cigarette ash grey. There are some which look like orchids).
This little one is a sort of cross between charcoal, and oak bark, with stripes/checking on the grasping arms.
So today was a three mantis day. I released about 600 this year, and have been counting them as I see them. There are some which live in the Anaheim peppers, A carolina which lived in the lavender, before the lavender died [the Huntington says it was the January frost, with a delayed effect], a large Carolina [almost certainly one I didn't release, as it was a good five-six inches long, and that more than a month ago] one which has been hanging out in the orchid/maidenhair fern/mouse houses; I saw it eating a fly today. That was the first time I've seen one eating, in the wild.
This one
has been hanging out in the gourds.
Here
is a female blossom. The next is the same, in B&W.
In the back yard I have puffball mushrooms in the grapes.
The grapes themselves look something like this
And as a sepia treatment
Clicking on the pictures will, as usual, link to a larger image.
