December 2023 24-

Martha O'Kennon It must be Winter! We have just passed the Winter Soltice. It has now rained or snowed several days in a row and the temperature is still about 30F. Here is a still photo of the wind blowing across the pond.



And here you can see the motion of the wind on the pond. Set the sound button off so you don't hear me exhaling. Click on the empty frame.



Lets look at our Ants. All I saw were Winter Ants. I like them for their graceful stance.



Here is a different Ant from 12/25/23. One difference that you might notice between today's Ant and the Winter Ants of yesterday is that today's Ant seems to have four black sections instead of brown ones. Still they were ID'ed as (American) Winter Ants, just like the earlier ones.



Remember that there is information in the name of the file for each image. You can see it by mousing over the image - look at the lower left of the screen. Or you can click on the image to get to the (usually) larger image. Then the info is displayed in the address line above. Sometimes the second click will actually display a different view of the original image.

Here are some giant Ant-like creatures. I still haven't gotten a positive ID of them.



Here are some creatures that live in containers. This first one, probably some a Common Bagworm Moth, lives in a nest covered with twigs. The second is covered with all sorts of little things.

Here is our usual Barklouse, Graphopsocus cruciatus. It seems to be the most winter-hardy Barklouse we have around here. The second one is making a huge shadow.



A number of Bugs showed up on December 27. This one seems to be a Lygus Bug. I hadn't seen one of them since Summer.



Here is one I thought was a Stink Bug but seems it may belong to the Drymus genus. Next is the Eastern Boxelder Bug, found in some dusty cloth.



Here are some nice little Moths, right? Well, almost.. They are Moth Flies: they look like Moths, but they are really Flies. They belong to the Psychodidae family of Moth Flies and Sand Flies.



Here are a few Loopers (larvae of Geometrid Moths).



Here is the case for a Moth of the form Bagworms, Clothes Moths, and Allies. The inhabitant of the case is just emerging.



Here are a set of somethings hanging from a filament. Were they the predators or the prey? We've seen this happening with Spiders that hung their prey on a vertical line (Picture 3 - from May 29 of this year).



Here are a few pictures of the Fishes swimming at about half the way down from the surface of the water. They are running at a low metabolism till Spring comes and they get fed once more!



So here we have a week with a minuscule amount of sunshine and very little warmth, and a forecast that doesn't offer much more meteorological magic. But you know how it is, suddenly in the darkest moments, a cloud will lift and we will remember what we're here for - namely to keep our spirits high and help to infect the world with our joy and resolve to bring our better climate back to earth. As an example, this afternoon the temperature suddenly shot up into the mid-50's F, and the sunlight for a while resembled mid-summer brightness. That's why we are seeing so much clearer pictures with the new camera today!

Love, Martha



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