The Grandcat

We haven’t officially met my daughter’s cat yet; he became our ‘grandcat’ during the pandemic (no way for us to make the trek from Maryland to Missouri during this time). Here are some annotated pictures that my daughter has shared with us over the past month – every one of them a little positive tweak to the day. Enjoy the cat pictures!

My morning coffee companion

I am probably supposed to be doing something

Someone pounced on a tote bag

Someone is going to have to explain to his students why their papers got crinkled

Working at his desk

At his standing desk

This dude flying in the sky. Or laying on a yoga mat

Opened my eyes to this dude this morning

He was waiting on the end table on my side of the bed. But he had been curled up against me most of the night. Right now he had made a nest on me in the futon.

Dun dun, dun dun

Cat thermometer says its cold

Lounging on me right now

Cat on his throne

TV cat

He wants me awake so he can snooze on me

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Blackberry Looper Moth. I finally remembered the little moth I captured in my office a few days ago….and used iNaturalist to identify it: a Blackberry Looper Moth. It’s small but a pretty shade of green with whitish markings. It probably came into my office on one of the flowers from the CSA cutting garden. My picture is magnified enough to see the antennae clearly; they are not ‘feathery’ so it is a female.

Paper Wasp

In one of my forays into my front flowerbed to check Monarch butterfly chrysalises, I noticed a wasp on a poke weed flower stalk. It was moving all over the stalk, investigating each open flower. I had my camera…and took a series of pictures. The pictures were easy enough to identify it as a Common Paper Wasp Polistes exclamans using the Maryland Biodiversity Project website. I learned from their database that it is a species of the southeastern US that appears to be expanding northward. I looked around for the nest but didn’t see one. We still have some time for the larvae to develop but as the nectar plants die back, only the young queens will remain – in a protected spot to over winter.

Enjoy the paper wasp acrobatics on the poke weed flowers slide show!

Cicada Identification

I photographed two cicadas in August. When I found the second one at home I had more time and took more pictures. I realized that I probably had enough different views that I should try to identify it. I knew it wasn’t a periodical cicada (one of the 13 or 17 year life cycle species) because it didn’t have red eyes.

I looked more closely at the markings and did some research using the Maryland Biodiversity Project website…and found it: Swamp Cicada – Neotibicen tibicen. The description they give fits perfectly: “Field marks include bright green in the wings, the white ventral area, greenish legs, and green patches on the head.”

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I decided to return to the few pictures I took of the first one I photographed. There were fewer pictures because I was in the field with summer campers. Still – it is clearly Linne’s Cicada – Neotibicen linnei.

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With this little success – I am motivated to try more often to identify what I manage to photograph…the challenge being to get quality photos from as many perspectives as possible!

Family BioBlitz at The Howard County Conservancy

The Howard County Conservancy hosted the Maryland Diversity Project last Saturday and I volunteered to help with the public part of the program that had families spending the morning photographing and recording the plants and animals at Mt. Pleasant.

Caterpillars seemed to dominate our finds: young milkweed tussock moth caterpillars as well as large Monarch, black swallowtail and orange striped oakworm moth caterpillars. There were also autumn tent worms.

We also saw a millipede, insects mating, a spider guarding a large egg sack…and a carpenter bee (male) that was lazing on a Joe Pye weed.

Near the end, I saw the birds nest fungus growing on mulch near the nature center. I was pleased that our group – which included a young child – all had fun and enjoyed our finds!

The slide show is in hike order….enjoy!