Learning to See the Beauty of Nature in Our Gardens
I knew that dragonfly were cannibals while still in the aquatic nymph stage, as a matter of fact, I recently read that if you put several dragonfly nymphs in a jar very soon you’d have just one really fat nymph. That seems to take sibling rivalry to a whole new dimension. I was out and [...]
As I walked past the Nanoprairie one morning to get the newspaper, I spied a huge dragonfly amid the coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea). It was so still for so long, I wondered if it was dead. I was able to get right up to it with my camera. Then I noticed that it was moving, ever [...]
This is a follow-up to two recent articles of mine. First, thanks to the expert ID of fellow team blogger Ursula Vernon, the pond “naiad” discussed in “From the Shallows of a Wildlife Pond” was shown to be predaceous diving beetle larvae (Dytiscidae). In Ursula’s words: “Almost looks like a water tiger—a diving beetle larvae. [...]
Green Dragon, Arisaema dracontium, to be precise. It’s a marvelous woodland wildflower that slowly unfurls to reveal its leaf. Yes, leaf! It may look like two leaves, but, it’s one leaf that forks into leaflets of unequal size and uneven numbers. The parted leaflets curve around to give Green Dragon a rather large horseshoe [...]
Summer seems to have hit early this year, as it’s already ninety-some degrees, the coneflowers are starting to flower, and I have acquired the Hippie Gardeners tan, which consists of white Birkenstock bands and sunburned toes. I was doing the last of the spring planting in the garden not long ago, and I spotted the [...]
Damselfly photo by Benimoto, available under a Creative Commons Attribution license While I learn about local wildlife from a variety of sources, I especially enjoy lessons from my fellow nature lovers. On one of the family walks offered by the Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy (highly recommended!), leader Andy Rabin, an Odonata enthusiast, asked participants if we [...]
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