Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/7/2020 – Macro Cecropia
/Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….
Here are the unique activities for yesterday:
Taking pity on the red-bellied woodpecker’s contortions…..refilling the bird feeder. I noticed the woodpecker late in the day on Monday…waited for it to dry out a little yesterday morning before I refilled the feeder. The pictures are clips from our birdfeeder cam videos.
Putting away groceries. The non-perishable groceries had been sitting in the back of my car since Saturday evening. We had put them there after they were delivered….to give any coronavirus time to dry up and die before we put them away.
Washing the plastic table covering – making a Zentangle mosaic. I’ve had the covering for over 20 years and have generally just wiped it down thoroughly. It was time it seemed grubbier than usual, so I put it in the washer with a few towels. I hung it over some deck chairs to let it dry thoroughly afterward. Then I made a mosaic of Zentangle tiles under it when I put it back on the table. Now we have new art to look at while we’re eating…during the pauses in conversation.
Creating some face mask variations. My husband discovered that his favorite pizza place does not deliver to our area….so he will pick it up as he has done in the past. He’ll wear a face mask as recommended by the CDC. I got some hair ties (covered rubber bands) in our last grocery delivery and I have coffee filters on hand. He had some old handkerchiefs to make his. If I must go out, I’ll make mine from a bandana or washable silk scarf. We are not going out very often so it will be easy enough to launder the cloth part of the mask after each use.
Catching up on Charles Cockell’s Life in the Universe Pandemic Series:
Is the heroic age of exploration over? (absolutely not!...this is probably my favorite video in this series so far)
Noticing a Northern Flicker in the yard – next to a robin. I saw the robin first through my office window then noticed the other bird when it moved. I had on my computer glasses, so my distance vision was not great. Then I used the zoom on my camera to id the bird…and take the picture in the next second.
Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts here.
And now for the first installment of macro photography with our mail-order bugs. Today I am featuring the Cecropia Moth. It’s the one pictured in the lower part of this picture – our order from The Butterfly Co.
I used my smartphone with a clip-on macro lens for this session. The Cecropia is the largest moth in Maryland. This one is a male based on the antennae. They are somewhat feather-like in that they have a central rib…but the stems off the rib are different. The Cecropia stems seems to be in pairs and there might be tiny fibers connecting each pair. I’ll have to get more magnification with a loupe next time (and be very careful not to break the antennae off).
A few years ago, we had the caterpillars at the Wings of Fancy exhibit at Brookside Gardens, so I am more familiar with the caterpillar than the adult moth. I didn’t unpin the specimen for this round of photographs but I know that it doesn’t have mouth parts….all the calories for the life of these moths are eaten when they are caterpillars. The adult form is only mating and laying eggs!
The wings have scales – sometimes looking like scales on butterfly wings…other times looking fur or hair-like. Another opportunity for my next round (using the loupe rather than the clip-on lens).
The downside of the loupe is that it works best sitting on the specimen…and inevitably some of the scales will come off. I am giving my husband the opportunity to photograph the bugs before I do anything that might damage them. Tomorrow’s post will be about the Luna Moth.
