After the Storm -The St. Augustine Road Fish Management Area seemed to fare well in Hurricane Matthew. The road was flooded and a few trees down but the weather has been cooler so we’re seeing more birds. There still only seems to be one big heron hanging around and although our daily walk around the…
Bugs
End of Summer
End of Summer 2016 ~ I guess the end of summer was actually in September but it hasn’t cooled down much. There have been a lot fewer interesting bugs in the St. Augustine Road Fish Management Area and only a few birds. Doug gave us a lotus plant that pupped from one in his water garden….
End of Summer
We recently marked the official “End of Summer” on our calendars but it’s still awfully hot here. I just cleaned off my computer hard drive and found some images from summer that I had forgotten all about. The shedding lizard looks like it’s wearing a little hoodie. And look at this lacewing larva feeding on…
Mystery of the Little Red Beetle
The mystery of the little red beetle is solved! Earlier this year, we started noticing little red beetles during our walks through the woods. We’ve been walking through these woods regularly for the past five years and never noticed them before. But I was in my lady bug phase, spending hours a day in our…
August 2015
It was hot and rainy but wow, did we find some interesting things. I have never seen a giant mosquito. This thing was huge – like an inch long. It looked exactly like a mosquito but I didn’t believe it was until I got home and looked it up. The common name is Gallinipper – …
Joshinetsu Highland National Park
July 2015 ~ We are having a lovely visit in the mountains of central Japan this week. We came to Japan to scuba dive and were fortunate enough to have time for a side trip to the Joshinetsu Highland National Park, located about a half-hour drive from the Kosatsu Onsen (mineral springs) where we are staying….
Blossoms & Bugs – DC Edition
We’re just back from a speaking engagement at the National Zoo in Washington so I thought I’d share some of the bugs and flowers I saw in the lovely yard of our hosts, who live just outside DC. They had several small ponds, one of which had a beautiful lotus blossom. The yard was full…