All Ears (Mostly)

 Backyard Nature, Golden Hour, Natural History, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Sep 052014
 

This evening I set out for Piney Woods Church Road a scant hour before sunset.  The air was a bit cooler, though still rather warm and muggy.  About halfway down the road, beside what was once a mule barn, I noticed a lean and wary Eastern Cottontail Rabbit (Sylvilagus floridanus).  It stood motionless in the grass, probably hoping to escape unnoticed.  It was completely alert, ears raised — though not quite “all ears”, as it apparently lost a couple of pieces of one of them in some past mishap.  I was able to approach to within eight feet or so of this rabbit before it turned tail and hopped a short distance away.  We parted company, and I continued on my walk.

 

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Argiope Aurantia, Front and Back

 Backyard Nature, Natural History, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Sep 042014
 

I know, yet another photograph of the Yellow Garden Spider (Argiope aurantia)….  I was on Facebook yesterday, and saw an entire discussion thread loaded with everyone’s photos of this enormous spider.  I can understand why, of course — this spider is easily among the most dramatic and photogenic of our orb-weavers.  Practically no other spider in the Southeast approaches it in size, and its vivid yellow coloration is quite conspicuous against the greens and browns of a forest edge.  Then there is its huge web, with its carefully-stitched “zipper” that helps to prevent wayward birds from crashing into it.

For a slightly different take on Argiope aurantia, I am including photographs of a moderately-sized female I saw along Piney Woods Church Road today, taken both from both the front and the back.  Her underside is not quite as visually stunning, but still imposing enough.  And this particular one was only an inch and a half across.

 

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Day 247: Creeping Lespedeza

 Backyard Nature, Native Plants, Natural History, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Sep 042014
 

This time of year, there are precious few flowers coming into bloom along Piney Woods Church Road.  I was elated to encounter diminutive pea-like blossoms in a small gully beside a neighbor’s driveway during my walk earlier this afternoon.  I am fairly confident that the quarter-inch blooms belong to Creeping Lespedeza, also known as Smooth Creeping Bush Clover (Lespedeza repens).  Like all members of the Pea Family (Fabaceae), this perennial, common to open woods and roadsides throughout the Eastern United States, enhances soil quality by fixing nitrogen.  Plus, it adds lovely tiny splashes of pinkish-purple to the roadside that I can enjoy on my daily walks during the hot and humid days of early September in Georgia.

 

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Day 246: Four Moments of Stillness: Water and Light

 Backyard Nature, Geometry and Nature, Native Plants, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Sep 032014
 

On my way to Atlanta on an errand, almost as an afterthought I stopped at Piney Woods Church Road this morning to take a few photographs.  The dew was still heavy on the grass everywhere, and it had rained heavily overnight, too.  As is so often the case, I found myself gravitating toward droplets of water.  Along the way, I also photographed a pair of reddish-brown leaves (probably pin cherry) at the end of a naked branch.  The result is these four photographs, and I simply couldn’t choose one picture among them to single out above the rest.  I find delight in the watery marble on a grass blade in the first image; the reflected sunlight in the drop of water on the tip of a sassafras leaf in the second (is that actually a heart I see?); the brilliantly backlit red-brown of the pair of dead leaves against the forest background in the third; and the elegance of the grapevine tendril necklace and with its watery pendant in the fourth.  I was blessed four times today, with such moments of stillness and delight.

(As an addendum, I did, in a sense, pay later for my morning.  Arriving home from Atlanta with ankles burning, I removed my shoes and socks to find chiggers everywhere!  They may have been lodging in my shoes (which I have since run through the washing machine) or they were waiting in the short grass just beside the road this morning to dive onto my feet.  Either way, I am beginning to get a bit terrified of the local chigger population this year.)

 

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Day 245: Adorable Butterfly

 Backyard Nature, Insects, Natural History, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Sep 022014
 

I was thrilled to be able to get quite close to this Little Wood Satyyr (Megisto cymela) on my Piney Woods Church Road walk earlier this afternoon.  I suspect its “beard” is what gives it the name of satyr, though I wasn’t able to find that in any of my field guides or favored websites.  Along the way, I did find out that satyrs tend to fly close to the forest floor, travelling with a quick, bobbing motion and occasionally landing on low vegetation, like this grapevine leaf.  Satyrs do not pollinate butterflies, but instead consume the sap of trees, as well as bits of dung, fermenting fruit, and rotting fungi.

 

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Day 244: Pour-off

 Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Sep 012014
 

This image of water clinging to the tip of a leaf along Piney Woods Church Road (after an afternoon rain) reminds me for some reason of pour-offs out West:  places where water flowing down a gully after a rainstorm drops abruptly down a vertical face into a canyon — a temporary waterfall, lasting only until the flow subsides again.  At the base of this leaf the water pools and waits to fall down onto the waiting gravel far below.

 

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Day 243: Terror on Piney Woods Church Road

 Backyard Nature, Natural History, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Aug 312014
 

With an hour to spare before leaving for an afternoon workshop in Atlanta on Radical Mycology, I decided to set out for a late-morning stroll down Piney Woods Church Road.  I had not ventured far when I came upon the web of the most immense spider I have yet encountered on my walks:  a female Yellow Garden Spider (Argiope aurantia), easily two inches in length.  She is one of the most lovely of spiders, and I gratefully took a number of photographs of her.  Then I noticed a new wildflower blooming from an adjacent vine, and I bent down to take several shots of the small, purplish-white blooms.  It was then that I noticed my hands.

Both of them were covered, from fingertip to wrist, with tiny moving specks.  They weren’t biting — yet.  And they were so small that I could barely feel them on my skin.  I was seized with terror:  could these be chiggers?  There are few things I am terrified of in the Georgia forest — there is lightning, certainly, but otherwise, chiggers top my list.  I frantically rubbed my hands together , trying to free them from me before they could clamber higher up my arms.  Even now, as I type this, having sprayed my hands with bleach and rinsed them with soapy water, I still noticed a couple of the tiny specks on the move.

What is strange is that I am not clear how so many got onto my hands so quickly.  I did not place my hands in anything — so they must have fallen from the trees above or jumped collectively from a particular spot. Were they chiggers?  I suspect that I will learn that soon enough.

The spider is beautiful, and quite harmless, unless you are an insect that happens into her web.

 

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