adventures of a canoelover

I started cleaning up the gear.  This is about a third of it.  Things I noted immediately:

I could probably hollow this out and move in.  This was three feet from the bikepath.  Hundreds of middle school kids probably walk past this thing every day: it’s a miracle it survived.

It seems like in the canoe world there’s nothing new under the sun.  Pointy at both ends…check.   Other than that, canoes don’t change much, and that’s not such a bad thing.  Otherwise you get this.

So a few days ago I wrote about Pink Soup.  Just this morning I get a giant postcard at work from Quill, the super-cheap office supply place.  Hey, it’s pink time at Quill.  Pink everything.  How about a breast cancer awareness Liquid Paper correction pen?  Just think, every time you blot out a typo you’ll be reminded to do your BSE.

You can get “YOUR COMPANY NAME HERE” mugs with pink ribbons.  If Hooters had a sense of humor…which they don’t…they’d get a case or two for each location and do a little P.R.

As I said before, I am as concerned about breast cancer as a person without breasts can be, so don’t get me wrong.  I hate breast cancer.  But I also hate marketing departments who think pink ribbons can sell office supplies.

Stop the madness,

  Canoelover

Okay, so strictly speaking it’s not insectapolooza, as arachnids aren’t insects, and arachnoinsectopolooza is enough to turn off even the most persistent reader of my ramblings.  As it is I will be persecuted (mostly by my daughter) for my attention to crawling things.   For the record, I also saw downy woodpeckers, goldfinches eating thistle seeds, and a bunch of other cool animalia, I just had the wrong lens for the job, so it’s time for insects.

Basically I wanted to go for a walk.  I’ve been sick for three or four days now, and I’ve spent most of that time inside and breathing recycled air, which causes my soul to creep into a closet, assume the fetal position and weep.  My soul needed air, so I decided to walk really slowly and just enjoy the sunshine.

There’s always something to see along the bikepath.  It’s lined with a lot of prairie plants, some native shrubs and of course, invasives (like the Bladder Campion (Silene cucubalis) above — still pretty, though).  All in all I took 230 pictures, as my camera was shooting 5 frames a second and with macros, it’s good to get a few shots as a lot of them are inevitablt blurry.

There are always bees working the asters along the bike path, but it was chilly today…it really feels like fall.  As a result the bees are all a little sluggish, and even allowed me to pick them up.  

This one rested a few minutes, and after I breathed on him a little in a cupped hand, took off like a shot and looked like a fully-caffeinated bee.  I think bee caffeine is warmth.

Then there were the Crab Spiders.

I was intrigued by a little clump of what looks like some sort of wild Phlox, and there was this lovely little crab spider, (family Thomisidae), maybe a misumenops.  After finding this one I started looking at flowers through the macro lens and that’s how I found this one, another Thomisid:

He was not so happy to see me, and gave me the whole threatening posture, waving his four front legs in the air and making little twitching moves like he was about to attack.  Tough little dude.

I also spotted a Nursery Web Spider (genus Pisaurina…notice the little bits of silk).  They’re

 hunters, like the ground spiders, and very fast.  Their eyes are not quite as directionally focused as ground spiders as they have to hunt in three dimensions vs. a flat plane.

Interestingly, I took a few pictures where there were insects that I didn’t see until I downloaded them and looked at them on the big screen.  This little clump of seed pods with one hanger-on was interesting to me, but I had no idea there was a Harvestman on the clump.  Look carefully…you can click on the picture to blow it up if you have to.

For the record, Harvestmen, or Daddy Long Legs, are not spiders.  They are Arthropods, they’re even Arachnids, but they’re of a different order (Opiliones) than true spiders.  The big differences are that harvestmen don’t spin webs (they can’t, they do not posess silk glands), they don’t have the usual spider body (cephalothorax and abdomen) but rather have a singular fused body all in one neat package.  They are also the only arachnid to have a penis (!) and they copulate and fertilize directly.

Crawling around on a warm rock I found this really cool wasp.  Not the kind that hurt us (most bees and wasps couldn’t give a fig about humans), but they do a number on spiders and crickets.  Don’t know the species since there are thousands of predatory wasps, but it’s from genus Chlorion.  Possibly a Chlorion aerarium, or a Cricket Wasp.

It wasn’t all spiders and wasps…

Most surprising for me was this little leafhopper, just a centimenter or so in length, and so brightly colored that I spotted her immediately.  The Red-banded (or Candystriped) Leafhopper (Graphocephala coccinea) is lovely, and fairly tolerant of my proximity.  The graphocephala means “lined head” which is interesting, since there’s a coloration line that goes right through her eye.  She reminds me of a tropical fish.

Next: not a bee.  A fly, most likely from the Syrphid family, can’t be sure because there are a bazillion flies.  The Syrphids mostly imitate bees and wasps, and you gotta admit it makes you think twice before picking one up.  Harmless, as usual.

The Yellow-collared Scape Moth (Cisseps fulvicollis) was tough to identify.  If I hadn’t have had the macro lens I would have passed it off as some weird fly.

Then you start looking closely and you can see the little collar of “fur” which is a dead giveaway for moths.  Cool, and as you can see, not exactly shy.  It was chilly and he hopped right up on my finger.

Anyway…I walked two miles in about three hours, and it felt good to have some outside air in my lungs for a change.  With our without insects, it was a great walk.  We live in a beautiful, diverse, amazing place.  I was amazed that I could find a dozen species on one plant (these are just the highlights).

Respectfully submitted,

 

 Canoelover

Many of you know of my involvement with breast cancer in a former career.  I was the Surveillance Coordinator (epidemiologist) for the Wisconsin Women’s Cancer Control Program, I am completely supportive of all attempts to find better treatments for breast cancer (I would hesititate to use the word cure until we have a better grasp of genetics).  I think it’s great the support breast cancer receives from so many organizations.

Mary is the Minister of Finance at our fine emporium.  Accountant doesn’t do her justice.  She’s a master of spreadsheets and numbers, but more than that, she speaks English.  She can explain financial things to non-financial brains, and she’s able to ferret out the stickiest problems when they appear.

Sandhill Cranes (Grus canadensis) are quite common on the Lower Wisconsin Riverway. They are big birds, with six to seven foot wingspans, and they are quite a racket in the morning.  You can see they have big feet…or maybe you can’t…

Here’s a quarter for some sense of scale.

Like I said…big.

They left more than tracks…they dropped feathers all over the place.  The ground fog made the feathers little works of art.

I chose not to photograph the guano splatterings, though a few of them bore striking resemblances a miniature Jackson Pollack.

Respectfully submitted,

  Canoelover

We stop frequently when we paddle the OWL Trip so as to make it last longer.  One stop just east of Spring Green was a small island separated from the mainland by a shallow muddy slough.  This Eastern Comma (Polygonia comma) was drinking from the moist sand.  He was fairly tolerant of my proximity.   I was able to coax him onto my finger fairly easily.

The cool part about the Commas in general is their wings, which are brilliantly colored on the top but rather subdued on the bottom.  They have a habit of opening and closing their wings while they drink or feed, so getting a picture of the top of their wings is hard with a small camera because of the delay between pressing the shutter release and the actual picture taking (which is why I bought a digital SLR).

Pretty little Eastern Comma.