Critters of the New

We found a bunch of cool critters on our hikes to and from climbing spots at the New River Gorge over the 4th of July weekend.


Leaving the crag one day I spotted a newly emerged luna moth (Actias luna) hanging out on a stick. The camera was buried somewhere in the backpack, so I found this (undoubtedly much better) photo on flickr to share. This was my second ever luna moth spotted in the wild, and the first for Doodle and Roo.


We found six of these juvenile red-spotted newts (Notophthalmus viridescens, red eft form) at the base of the Honeymooner's Ladders at Endless Wall. They made themselves scarce not long after we arrived, but we felt lucky to have spotted them out and about.


While J was retrieving the last bits of climbing gear at the end of our final day there, our friend Brenda spotted this brilliantly-colored bird hanging out in the understory - turns out it's a Scarlet Tanager! This is another flickr photo, as yet again the camera was buried.


We also found a beautiful Promethea silkmoth during our hike out in the rain. This is another photo from flickr, as we only paused briefly during the rainstorm to admire the gorgeous, large male moth obviously trying to stay dry on a tree trunk as we passed by.

Ashy gray

There have been an interesting sequence of insect events transpiring in our yard. As new leaves emerged on the shrubs this spring we observed an abundance of aphids. They seemed to be everywhere. But then we started seeing these critters:

our knights in shining armor, the ladybug larvae. The aphids vanished.

Then the larvae started pupating, and we were finding things that looked like this all over our house.The larvae had done such a number on the aphids that it seemed they were lacking prey; we observed some larvae attacking and eating some ladybug pupae!

Fortunately the predation seemed minimal because now the ladybug adults are emerging and, lo and behold, the white pupae turned into this:

The Ashy Gray Lady Beetle. I had no idea such thing existed. So cool!

Cooper's Rock

Over Memorial Day weekend we went down to Cooper's Rock, WV for a short camping and bouldering outing with some friends. The weather was great, the company awesome, and the area beautiful. We were all glad to get outside and get in our first camping trip of the season.

Doodle found a whole bunch of these large millipedes which kept her and Roo entertained for much of the bouldering sessions. Very cool critters. I think it'd be fun to get back to Cooper's Rock again sometime.

International Rock Flipping Day

September 20th is International Rock Flipping Day. This is a fun way to explore a part of the outdoors that's often overlooked, and to share what we find. Homeschoolers, this would be a fun project for your kiddos to participate in.

If you're joining in for the first time, here's a quick rundown of the procedure:

• On or about September 20th, find your rock and flip it over.
• Record what you find. "Any and all forms of documentation are welcome: still photos, video, sketches, prose, or poetry."
• Replace the rock as you found it; it's someone's home.*
• Post on your blog, or load your photos to the Flickr group.
• Send Wanderin' Weeta a link (she's coordinating IRFD this year). Her e-mail address is in her blog profile, or you can add a comment to any IRFD post.
• She will collect the links, e-mail participants the list, and post it for any and all to copy to your own blogs. (Maybe we can Tweet it, too, this year. Use the hashtag #rockflip.)

There is a handy badge available for your blog, here.

* A reminder to all rock flippers that rocks should be flipped back into place. If there are critters underneath, don't place the rock back on top of them, move the animals to the side, replace the rock and let them scurry back.

Thanks to Bug Girl for alerting me to this fun exercise in nerdery.

Hope to see you flippin' rocks on the 20th!