The Good, Bad, & The Ugly

Mantis religiosa

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

This big beautiful girl is one of many Praying Mantids (Mantis religiosa) we've encountered while doing yard clean-up around mom's place during the past 12 days. They are in the process of depositing their foam-like egg cases right now (see photo below) after which they will die. Each egg case or sac can contain up to 300 eggs. Praying Mantids are an insect species beneficial to humans because they are voracious predators of other insects, many of which are damaging to flowers, vegetables, and fruit.

If you're not convinced of the predatory skills of this amazing insect you can see photos of one that actually captured and ate a hummingbird (click here). Yes, she may be a lovely long-legged green-thinking biocentric female but I wouldn't want to get too close to her if we were any where near the same size.

Mantis religiosa Egg Sac

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

What's Scary About This Picture?
Click on photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

Many people think insects are ugly or scary looking, especially big insects like Praying Mantids, but to me they're elegantly beautiful in design and fascinating to behold. What's creepy looking to me in this picture is my hairy old arm...


Melanoplus sanguinipes
Click on photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom


Another handsome colorful bug in abundance here is the large Migratory or Spur-throated Grasshopper (Melanoplus sanguinipes), but this insect is a pest to humans, notorious because of it's appetite for agricultural crops, grasses, leafy vegetables, fruits, flowers, buds, and even tree bark. My guess is that these critters are a challenge to control with organic methods when you're surrounded by miles of cornfields, but, not surprisingly, these grasshoppers are a favorite food of the Praying Mantids above, which, I'm sure, is why the mantids are also here in such great numbers.

Dragonfly After A Rainstorm...

Click on photo to enlarge © 2010 jim otterstrom

A showy thunderstorm rolled across the Bear River Valley here in Utah last evening providing us with a magnificent light show out the dining room windows at dinner time. Rain came and went through the night and we awoke to a brief downpour about six this morning. Wandering around the yard just before breakfast I came across this dragonfly lying in the grass. I picked it up and placed it on an old piece of wood for this photo. It was still alive but I'm not sure it will survive its drenching.

~postscript~

The above dragonfly dried out warmed up and flew away...

Innocent Dragonfly is Crucified on the Grille of a Jeep Cherokee!

Click on individual photos to enlarge
All photos © 2010 jim otterstrom

Sacrificed to a machine, the haunting corpse of a dragonfly hangs by its wings from the crossbar of a 1995 Jeep Cherokee grille on August 6th, 2010.

I was quite taken aback when I discovered this unfortunate victim of an automobile suspended from a plastic cross---it's fragile body perfectly preserved in graceful form---too reminiscent of familiar images of a more well-known crucifixion.

Most bugs splat unceremoniously into oblivion when they're hit by several thousand pounds of machinery speeding down a highway, leaving us not much to think about except cleaning up the mess, but somehow this magnificent little creature, even after death, has managed to tell us something about the beauty of its existence, and the tragedy of its passing.

Yes, it's just another bug, one of billions lost each day to the unintentional recklessness of human activity.

Yet, perhaps this tiny innocent member of earth's living community has also died for our sins, by our hands, so that we might once again be patiently reminded by Mother Nature of the destructiveness of our way of life.

How many messengers does Nature's Creation need to send us before we finally get the message?

We have already wiped out 98% of our old growth forests, 99% of our native prairies are gone, 80% of the rivers in China no longer support fish life, and 90% of the large fish in the worlds oceans are gone.

Earth is currently losing between 150 & 200 species every single day, and I can only wonder at the bountiful diversity that once graced this planet before our species came stumbling along into fossil fuels, industrialism, and the age of the infernal combustion machine, which may well render the planet uninhabitable for oxygen breathers.

I'm certainly not religious in any traditional sense of the word, but take another close-up look at this dragonfly, it has a message for us, and, it even looks as if it might have been praying when it died...

...praying, possibly, for the rest of us.

So, just in case, I'm keeping it in a box until Easter.

~

Photographed on a cloudy afternoon with a Canon SX10IS on a tripod; manual function, super macro setting, ISO 80, f/8.0, at 3 tenths of a second. Contrast & brightness slightly modified in Photoshop CS3. Some images cropped to show detail.

Monarch Butterfly on Narrow-Leaf Milkweed

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2009 jim otterstrom

Milkweed is the host plant for the Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus). Here a male Monarch feeds on one of three Narrow-Leaf Milkweed (Asclepias fascicularis) growing in our garden.

~In Our Butterfly Garden, This Very Week~

Western Tiger Swallowtail

Papilio rutulus

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2008 jim otterstrom

I love how this Western Tiger Swallowtail is embracing the Rose Sage (Salvia pachyphylla) flower with its right fore-leg while drinking up nectar through it's straw-like proboscis. Enlarge to see details

~

Three Beauties Feeding on Rose Sage Nectar

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2008 jim otterstrom

Some years ago I was in our local birdwatcher store, Wild Wings, browsing through a book on butterflies when a wrinkled little woman, well into her 90s, came up to me and gently placed a feeble hand on my arm.

Looking me in the eyes, and obviously a bit distraught, she asked me what had happened to Big Bear's butterflies.

The old gal had grown up here, moving away decades ago, and was back with relatives revisiting her childhood home for the first time.

She told me that when she was a little girl, during every summer, the entire valley would be aswarm with a mass of butterflies and she couldn't understand why they weren't here in those numbers anymore.

Her remembrance created a wondrous picture in my imagination but the urgency in her question caught me off guard, and before I could respond, the relatives came and whisked her away.

It was one of those moments that stick vividly in my heart, and I wondered how much of her memory was idealizing the place of her childhood, and how much was reality.

Since then, I've often thought of all the square miles of our high-mountain Bear Valley meadows which have been replaced by roads, lodges and ski resorts, shopping centers, homes, small businesses, the golf course and the airport. I think about weed abatement regulations and how much of the wild flora in the valley is now cut to the ground just as spring is unfolding.

And, I remember the Mourning Cloak (Nymphalis antiopa) butterfly I saw laying eggs on a willow branch in Rathbun Creek. I was cleaning litter out of the creek channel one spring, as part of a community project, when I noticed yellow-fringed wings slowly folding and unfolding just a few inches in front of my eyes.

The butterfly seemed oblivious to my presence as she meticulously deposited dozens of tiny eggs, one at a time, in a spiral pattern around the branch of the willow (click here and scroll down to see a Mourning Cloak laying her eggs).

I watched with fascination until she was finished laying her eggs, making a mental note of the willow's exact location, and planned on coming back regularly to monitor the progress of the eggs.

Two days later I discovered that all the willows along Rathbun Creek had been cut to the ground by a giant weed-whacking machine, the branches chipped, shredded, and hauled away.

My thoughts then drifted sadly upstream and down, wondering how many millions of insect eggs, butterfly and otherwise, were lost through our obsessive/compulsive meddling in Rathbun Creek alone.

One of the primary purposes of Earth Home Garden is to provide habitat for the native species of Big Bear, and to expose other people in our community to the joy and ecological benefits of gardening with native plants. The number and variety of birds & butterflies visiting our garden seems to increase with each passing year.

For The Contrary Goddess...

Buddha and the Mushroom Click on photo to enlarge - © 2008 jim otterstrom

Fellow blogger, The Contrary Goddess, gave me a "tiny challenge" I couldn't resist.

"Name 100 species which live in your neighborhood", she asked.

Well, here's 117 native (or migratory) species which are residents or visitors to our own yard, and I've barely scratched the surface of the bird and insect visitors.

As I find the time I'll be adding the scientific names to the list below and will include links to various botanical websites for plant profiles.

Earth Home Garden Species

1. Common Yarrow

(Achillea millefolium)

2. Wild Onion

(Allium sp.)

3. Indian Hemp

(Apocynum cannabinum)

4. Rock-Cress

(Arabis pulchra)

5. Prickly Poppy

(Argemone munita)

6. Crimson Columbine

(Aquilegia formosa)

7. Narrow Leaf Milkweed

(Asclepias fascicularis)

8. Green Striped Mariposa Lily

(Calochortus invenustus)

9. Wild Morning-Glory
10. Indian Paintbrush
11. Ash Gray Paintbrush
12. Thistle
13. Miner’s Lettuce
14. Virgin’s Bower (Pipestem)
15. Wild Hyacinth (Blue Dicks)
16. Fireweed
17. California Fuschia
18. Stream Orchid
19. Fleabane
20. Yerba Santa
21. California Buckwheat
22. Pine Buckwheat
23. Sulfur Flower (Sulfur-Color Buckwheat)
24. Wright’s Buckwheat
25. Western Wallflower
26. California Poppy
27. Wild Geranium
28. Gilia
29. Rydberg’s Horkelia
30. Western Blue Iris (Blue Flag)
31. Granite Gilia (Prickly Phlox)
32. Mountain Aster
33. Humboldt Lily
34. Lemon Lily
35. Blue Flax
36. Brewer’s Lupine
37. Grape Soda Lupine
38. Dwarf Lupine
39. Giant Lupine
40. Tarweed
41. Pineapple Weed
42. Coyote Mint
43. Coyote Tobacco
44. California Evening Primrose
45. Anderson’s Penstemon
46. San Bernardino Beardtongue
47. Firecracker Penstemon
48. Bumble-Bee Penstemon
49. Scarlet Penstemon
50. Mountain Bugler
51. Showy Penstemon
52. Desert Blue Bells
53. Mountain Phacelia
54. Sticky Cinquefoil
55. Buttercup
56. Southern Goldenrod
57. Apricot Mallow
58. White Hedge Nettle
59. Stinging Nettle
60. Hedgehog Cactus
61. Beaver-Tail Cactus
62. Cane Cholla (Snake Cholla)
63. Prickly-Pear Cactus
64. Utah Service-Berry
65. Greenleaf Manzanita
66. Silver Wormwood
67. Great Basin Sage
68. Rubber Rabbitbrush
69. California Flannelbush
70. Fremont’s Bushmallow
71. Western Choke-Cherry
72. Antelope Bush
73. Sierra Currant
74. Rose Sage
75. Apricot Mallow
76. Snowberry
77. White Fir
78. Incense Cedar
79. Mountain Mahogany
80. Western Juniper
81. Jeffrey Pine
82. Singleleaf Pinyon Pine
83. Quaking Aspen
84. California Black Oak
85. Pygmy Nuthatch
86. White-Breasted Nuthatch
87. Mountain Chickadee
88. Western Bluebird
89. Steller’s Jay
90. Northern Flicker
91. White-Headed Woodpecker
92. Anna’s Hummingbird
93. Rufous Hummingbird
94. Western Tanager
95. Wilson’s Warbler
96. Yellow-Rumped Warbler
97. Mourning Dove
98. Acorn Woodpecker
99. Hairy Woodpecker
100. Violet-Green Swallow
101. American Robin
102. Black-Headed Grosbeak
103. Rufous-Sided Towhee
104. Band-Tailed Pigeon
105. Lesser Goldfinch
106. Dark-Eyed Junco
107. Cassin’s Finch
108. Mourning Cloak Butterfly
109. Giant Swallowtail Butterfly
110. Painted Lady Butterfly
111. California Sister Butterfly
112. Monarch Butterfly
113. Western Gray Squirrel
114. California Ground Squirrel
115. Merriam Chipmunk
116. Western Toad

117. Western Terrestrial Garter Snake

Blue-Eyed Darner

Rhionaeschna multicolor

Click on photos to enlarge - © 2008 jim otterstrom

During my morning walks along the marsh I've recently been enjoying the Blue-Eyed Darner Dragonflies hanging around the Tule Reeds near the boardwalk.

This morning I brought along the tele-converter lens for my camera and got a few decent shots of one.

These are probably as good as I'm going to get from distances of about 8 to 20 feet with my little 8 mega-pixel digital camera

Canon S5IS with Canon TC-DC58B tele-converter lens, manual mode, f /3.5, ISO 80, 1/800th second.

Paradise Lives...

...all around us

The closer we look...

...the more we see

Click on photos to enlarge - © 2008 jim otterstrom

A vivid Beaver-Tail Cactus-Flower (Opuntia basilaris) caught my fancy today, in the soft-filtered afternoon light, revealing ever more sensual beauty as I moved in closer with my camera to discover that I wasn't the only one intoxicated by the attractive powers of this stunning display.

The Beauty Of A Common Fly...

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2007-2008 jim otterstrom

This fly posed patiently for me on the porch railing last July---with my lens only a few millmeters away---and I came across the photo again today when I was organizing some files.

It's difficult for me to kill these strangely beautiful creatures when I've taken such a close look at them.

We all have a place among the diversity of our ecosystem, so a better solution would be to keep flies outside where they belong, not in the house.

Still, if one does get in and I can't catch it, or shoo it out, the trusty old fly-swatter does come into play sometimes.

It's sad how we humans can kill billions of the numerous little insect "pests" all around us without considering the miracle of their existence, or our mutual interdependence on the continuing complexity of life on earth.

A complexity that diminishes with each lost species, and we're currently losing an estimated 50,000 species per year, 137 per day, or appoximately 6 a minute.

The common housefly is probably less threatened with oblivion than we are, but the callous disregard which enables us to define other species as contemptable, or simply expendable, is clearly reflected in those great numbers we are driving to extinction through our monumental arrogance and thoughtlessness.

I try to be relatively conscientious about co-existing harmoniously with the species around me, so it's disturbing when I realize that I'm sometimes just as culturally conditioned to knee-jerk reactionary behavior as everyone else.

One day, not long ago, I was walking along a sidewalk with my daughter, pre-occupied with conversation, when she pointed toward the concrete and asked, "Is that a cockroach?". I instinctively stepped on it, without a thought, and my daughter exclaimed, "Why did you do that, I feel awful now?".

Well, I still feel bad! The little creature was simply minding its own business when a human came along to stomp it out of existence. And I'm the guy who, for decades, has carefully captured spiders who found their way into the house and taken them outdoors.

A few years ago, Peggy and I went on a day-long desert road trip with my sister-in-law, Penny. There was an irruption of Painted Lady Butterflies that year and they were everywhere, by the millions. We obliterated several thousand with the grille & windshield of Penny's car, and ours was only one of countless other vehicles wreaking the same havoc.

Thoughts of the once common Passenger Pigeon came to my mind, and the stories of how they once darkened the daylight sky with their great numbers before we hunted them to extinction in the early part of the 20th Century.

Photographed July 27th 2007

Canon S5IS - Manual mode, supermacro setting, ISO 80, f 2.7, 1/500th second.

GOOD MORNIN' SUNSHINE...

Indian Blanket (Gaillardia pulchella)

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2007 jim otterstrom

This picture was taken in the garden at 10:14 yesterday morning. With all the recent news about diminishing Honey Bee (Apis mellifera) populations it's very good to have so many in our garden this year. They're here in good numbers but it seems to me they arrived a bit late.

Canon S5IS - Manual Mode - f/6.3 - 1/160 sec - ISO 80

For David - Orb-Weaver - Topanga, CA - 1971

Click on photo to enlarge

I've been an absentee blogger for the past week or so and one of our local bloggers, David, commented that if I'm not going to blog I should at least go and visit his blog to identify a spider he photographed.

Well David, I'm no arachnid expert but your spider (nice photo by the way) appears to be very similar to this Orb-Weaver I photographed on my front porch in Topanga Canyon 35 years ago.

It spun the most beautiful symmetrical webs that were backlit each night by my porchlight. I was very protective of this spider and when anyone came in the yard I asked them to please avoid walking through the web, although I did accidently walk through it a few times myself, only to watch the spider patiently rebuild it in the very same place.

Another of the countless fascinating creatures that make our world so magic and interesting, and David, if you don't want that one around, you can always bring it over to Earth Home Garden and I'll give it a corner of the porch to decorate.

This type of Orb-Weaver is somewhat reluctant of biting people, and, from what I understand, only very mildly venomous if provoked to do so.

I've been too intoxicated with nature to sit at the computer much and I apologize again for neglecting my blog friends, but right now Earth Home Garden reminds me of a miniature version of Califonia's Central Valley "bee pastures" (pre-agriculture era) as described by John Muir in his book 'The Mountains Of California', and I just can't stand to be inside.

I took this photo on my front porch in September of 1971 with my brand new Nikon F1 (a luxury I could afford only because of my, also new, job as a postman). The picture was recently tweaked a little bit in Photoshop to enhance the image copied from a 35 year-old slide and emphasize the spider's striking design.

Fritillary With Yarrow...

Click on photo to enlarge

A Fritillary Butterfly with a beak nick in its wing visits native yarrow in the garden today.

A Female Worker Bee On The Job...

Click on photo to enlarge

I'm totally consumed by the abundance of life in the yard right now. Countless insect pollinators of every shape, size, and description, are working over the tens of thousands of flowers now in bloom here, and yesterday, I counted 26 species of birds visiting our tiny piece of paradise.
The lovely Honey Bee (Apis mellifera) posing for me, a female worker, was photographed this morning as she collected pollen from a Prickly Poppy.
Note the bulging pollen sacs on her hind legs.

Canon S2 IS on Manual setting, Super-Macro mode, f/2.7 at 1/1000th of a second, no attachments.

Honey In The Making...

Click on photo to enlarge

A Honey Bee is so engrossed with this native thistle in the garden that it completely ignored me for 15 minutes of shooting even though the camera lens was nearly touching it at times. It took me so long because I was waiting for just the right angle of light to sharply define the eye while also trying to keep the entire bee in focus. This is the best shot out of eleven.

Photographed at 9:44 this morning under thinly clouded skies in Super-Macro mode with a shutter speed of 160th of a second at f/3.5 in the Manual setting .
I normally keep the ISO setting at 50 for the highest quality image but on this shot I switched to ISO 100 so I could use the relatively fast shutter speed needed for a constantly moving subject.

Nectar Love...

Click on photo to enlarge

A fuzzy little Bee Fly (Bombyliidae) extracts nectar from a Blue Flax flower while also collecting the sticky pollen along its proboscis to fertilize the next flower.

The Beneficial Red Wood Ant

Click on photo the enlarge

I've been fascinated by the behavior of this species of ant since we moved to the mountains 22 years ago.
They thatch large mounds in the forest out of pine-needles and wood debris, usually in a dead tree stump or fallen log and these mounds, which shelter the colony, are sometimes 3 feet high and 4 to 5 feet wide at the base.
I often see the ants carrying large sections of pine-needles, or even entire needles, back to the colony where they carefully place the pieces into the ongoing construction.
Three years ago I discovered one of these colonies in a vacant city lot that was about to be developed, and not wanting to see the colony lost, I dug it up and transplanted it to the native plant section of Earth Home Garden.
My son helped me dig up the rotted wood & pine-needle mound, shoveling the whole mess onto a tarp in the back of his pick-up, in hope that the queen might survive and the colony could continue on in our yard.
The transplant was successful, and after moving themselves to a different, apparently more suitable log, the colony is thriving and the mound growing larger each year.
It was suggested to me that these might be Carpenter Ants, which could eventually destroy the frame structure of our house, but after researching Carpenter Ants on the internet, I couldn't find a species of Carpenter Ant that resembled this one.
So I e-mailed photos of the ants to the legendary E. O. Wilson---Professor of Science and Curator in Entomology, Museum of Contemporary Zoology, Harvard University---probably the world's foremost ant expert, author of 'The Diversity Of Life' and, with Bert Holldobler, 'The Ants'.
Dr. Wilson generously took the time to identify the ants for me, and e-mailed a very kind reply.
It turns out that these ants are not a pest, but actually a species of Formica rufa ants (or Wood Ants), a very beneficial insect, one species of which is used for pest control in some forests of Germany, where they transplant colonies much as I did, into pest infested forest areas.
Now that I know what type of ants they are I've found more info on the internet, and some studies seem to show that native plants growing in the vicinity of Wood Ant colonies are healthier because the ants feed on insect pests, and there is also evidence that the presence of Wood Ants increases soil fertility.

Don't Worry, Bee Happy... ;~)

Click on photo to enlarge

A very large Bumble Bee collects pollen from Rose Sage (Salvia pachyphylla) this Sunday afternoon in the native plant garden

Bee In A Blanket

Click on photo to enlarge

Bee on an Indian Blanket Flower (Gaillardia pulchella) in the Earth Home Garden habitat.

It's The Little Things

Click photo to enlarge
A nice fat earthworm makes his way back into the soil after I uncover the seed-beds this morning.

Tiger Swallowtail On Thistle

Another of our Native Plant Notecards

Description on back of card;

Cirsium occidentale

The jagged outline and spiny foliage of our native California Thistle lend a coarse rugged character to wildflower gardens, while the nectar of its furry purple flowers lure butterflies of many species. Thistles are commonly found in open areas of the forest, and by roadsides, or scattered across the vacant lots of Big Bear Valley. They are in the sunflower family.

Papilio rutulus

This gorgeous swallowtail inhabits woodlands near streams and residential neighborhoods. In Big Bear they feed upon willow, quaking aspen and a variety of wildflowers, including thistle, milkweed and penstemons. The female lays green spherical eggs, singly, on the undersides of leaves. She may deposit several eggs on the same leaf.