www.inaturalist.org/observations... abstract item food chain

maple specialist whitefly bugguide.net/node/view/11...

painful baby

a baby

very bitter if you put them in your mouth

Am I?

actually that patch has all 3 Japanese invasive Amynthas/Metaphire, could be interesting data on how they develop in sympatry, maybe I should try to come up with something better than “just grab every worm I see”

I want to catch every worm in this one patch of soil so I can better understand how common it is for them to develop 1 or 2 prostates/male pores but im too lazy to do it systematically and idk what ill do with 200ish large jumpy worms

those tibial spurs are ridiculously pointy though, crazy how they just pop out with stilettos on

she can only card 1 wool.

lest you think I have betrayed bugs for birds, the mantis was a Tenodera which are invasive here and also two catbirds had already torn it mostly in half. I just helped off the poor thing and the bolder bird, which stayed behind for the remains, decided that day that I was its personal bird feeder

was a little worried in the spring because none of the catbirds were bothering me yet and maybe it didn’t make it back from migration, but I should have known better, the Dummy is unstoppable.

in this specific case it’s because the binomial name of gray catbird is Dumetella carolinensis, but also definitely a huge dummy

I prefer to feed garden bugs I find like scarab grubs and cutworms to mealworms which I would assume are less nutritious, but I’ll also let Dummy take some feeder roaches if I have leftover frozen ones from my pets. because who could refuse this face

Dummy shows up in midsummer when the fledglings need a lot of food. it self-tamed in part because I had mealworms in the garage and it got comfortable being around me without me even realizing as it snuck past me and got beakfuls for the kiddos

I assume they probably taste like soil and also those nasty defense chemicals they spray. they smell sort of like unscented soap (bitter and greasy odor) mixed with you guessed it soil

they are the exact color and texture of a hog dog except every segment has a ring of little spiny bristles which I guess isn’t exactly like a hot dog at all. they do squirt you with juice sometimes even if you are not biting them. I don’t bite them though. I should stop typing

I think I caught a couple more that are at least 170, and that’s when not stretched out. I think preservation may have made the study specimens contract although properly relaxed ones shouldn’t be that much shorter than live… I’m just in awe at the size of these big floppers

spectacular