The Daily R-r-r-ibbit

Cheeky monkey reveals his primate snaps | The Sun

I saw one of these photos on the news this morning...there are a couple more at the link below the photo, including one the crested black macaque took of the owner of the camera...too good not to share!

via www.thesun.co.uk

Reason number three-gazillion-and-one to stop blowing up mountains: salamanders

   

Untitled video by Joe Milmoe at Vimeo has some familiar faces in it.

The case of the red-tinted tentworms

When I photograph something, I'm very aware of relating with it. But how does that interaction show itself? The image certainly implies interactions: a focus of attention directed to a subject...a waxing or waning desire to photograph it...a reckoning with the technology of the camera...a decision about how to frame the subject of my gaze. Much of all that seems to be done with some conscious awareness and intention. But the complexity, the breadth, the depth of that interaction is only hinted at in the image itself.

When I bring the images up in a viewer -- many hundreds and even thousands over time -- am I surprised by them? For the most part, no. At first glance, what I see is generally what I expected. On occasion, even at first glance, I am surprised by something, but, more often, it's only as I sit with the images and let them penetrate layers of assumption and expectation, that something new, something unexpected emerges.

I had not really thought a lot about this process until a few days ago when I uploaded this image of some eastern tent caterpillars that had recently emerged from their "tent" on a sweetgum tree:

What surprised me was the red tint on this image. I had not noticed anything like this as I took the photo -- neither sweetgum bark nor tent "cats" are reddish. However, I knew immediately how the red wash had become part of the image: I took this photo early in the morning, looking toward the sun that was just barely up over the ridges...and I was wearing a coral-red t-shirt.

In the instance of this particular image, my participation was reflected in a way that spoke more directly to a co-creative process with an "other" -- the sun, the tree, the caterpillars, the camera, my shirt.

For me, eye-to-eye macro-encounters -- especially with species other than humans -- introduce another question: who (really) is doing the gazing? Such are the contemplations of life in Frogpond Holler yet to be born into words...

Girl Chimpanzees May Use Sticks as Dolls | Wired Science

And now for something kind of different on this cold, gray, first day of winter: British primatologist Richard Wrangham, co-author of Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, now brings us a look at the play of girl and boy chimps...

The findings, reported in the Dec. 21 Current Biology, are the first documented evidence of boy and girl primates in the wild playing differently with their toys. Though these patterns’ origins will surely be argued, they add to the constellation of behaviors shared by humans with our closest living relative.

“We find that juveniles tend to carry sticks in a manner suggestive of rudimentary doll play and, as in children and captive monkeys, this behavior is more common in females than in males,” wrote anthropologists Richard Wrangham of Harvard University and Sonya Kahlenberg of Bates College.

via www.wired.com

An unexpected encounter in the holler...

It is way past too hot to be outside anymore for awhile, but the butterfly and bee show just outside my window today has been awesome.

A sulfer butterfly has been around the past two weeks. I've gotten some telephoto shots since he or she seems to prefer the flowers in the planter that's furthest away.

Today it came over to the Echinaceas and I got some decent images by leaning out the window:

While I was mesmerized with the sulfer, an unexpected guest appeared right in front of me, seeming to check me out. I overrode an impulse to maneuver for the best shot -- just clicked the shutter and hoped for the best. It was a good choice. Before the camera was ready to capture another image, the hummingbird had flown away:

[Photos by Cathie Bird]

Butterfly Season Opens with a Bang in Frog Pond Holler

Oh, how I love it! No nets, no binoculars, not even a high-powered digital SLR. Just me, my little 8 MP Canon and the butterflies! Captcha, baby, captcha!

The first butterfly I saw in the holler this year was an Eastern Comma, followed within a week or so by a Mourning Cloak that I included in my March 19th post. Then the Eastern Tiger Swallowtails started showing up.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus). [Photo by Cathie Bird.]

I found this one while photographing violets right outside my back door, and later got images of one in a cherry tree and a flowering crabapple:

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail [Photo by Cathie Bird]

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail [Photo by Cathie Bird]

The next flybys I noticed were the smaller duskywings. I think this one is a Horace's Duskywing (Erynnis horatius), my first one ever to photograph:

                                                                       [Photo by Cathie Bird]

Yesterday, I caught this Spicebush Swallowtail on my quince bush. I've seen these many times in the holler, but this is the first one I've photographed:

Spicebush Swallowtail (Papilio troilus) [Photo by Cathie Bird]

If I have a good butterfly hunting story, it's this one. Last year I spent much time, energy and spur-of--the-moment dashes outside to photograph the fast flying and skittish sulphurs. Finally, on the 30th of October, after most of the flowering plants had ceased to bloom and were shriveling toward winter, I did get a picture of one. I had to take it while leaning out of a window and stretching my Canon's zoom to the max, so it wasn't that sharp. I posted the photo and the story here, and made it a priority for this season to bag a good sulphur image.

For the past week or so I've seen a few sulphurs around, but have learned better than to chase them. Yesterday, while I was photographing the Spicebush and Tiger Swallowtails around my quince bush, a sulphur zoomed in. After flitting around, landing and taking off again if I moved very much, I was able to get these shots off:

Cloudless Sulphur (Phoebis sennae). [Photo by Cathie Bird]

                                                                             [Photo by Cathie Bird]

So that's been my first big week of the 2010 butterfly season. I've seen some little Blues and a white butterfly of some kind, and maybe a Sleepy Duskywing as well, but no decent photos yet. The plant life in the holler is having a great year after our wet winter, so I'm guessing the butterfly bounty may continue as well. Within the past hour I've seen several butterflies near the window, even as I'm writing this.

By the way, I usually don't include a species designator unless I'm more than 95% sure my identification is accurate. If I decide later that another identification is more accurate, I edit the post to reflect that. I use Jeffrey Glassberg's Butterflies Through Binoculars series as my primary hard-copy field guide, and have made use of some excellent online sources, too.

If anyone reading my blogs ever has a better idea on what species we're looking at, or if you know of good online guides, feel free to leave a comment. I'll be posting these and other photos on my Flickr account and my Earthbytes blog soon.

Life Cycle of a Chair Moth

Last summer I found a caterpillar on the quilt that I keep on my recliner. I got my bug jar so I could give him a lift back outside but as I stood there looking at him I decided to let him stay…at least until I got a picture of him. I pulled the quilt toward the light temporarily so that I could get a picture without the flash going off. I figured that amount of light would be pretty annoying to him, if not downright frightening or painful.

An amazing looking caterpillar camps out on my quilt. [Photo by Cathie Bird]

After I got some pictures, I pulled the quilt back to its original position. The caterpillar had settled on a square that was behind my sitting space and far enough down to be out of the way and out of bright light. Through all of this maneuvering, he hadn’t moved at all. I decided to leave him there for awhile and just see what happened.

After a few days he was in the same place, but I noticed some silky strands of material – like a web – on the quilt and surrounding his position in the center of them. I didn’t really get that he was starting the process of building a cocoon until I came out one morning and found these threads all around him. They were still in a very thin layer and I could see him moving around inside. By this time his caterpillar self had changed substantially. He looked more like a smooth blob in there rather that a hairy caterpillar.

Weaving the cocoon: the darker area of the cocoon is the moth-to-be. At this stage I could still see through to the quilt material in lighter area of the cocoon. [Photo by Cathie Bird]

The cocoon appeared to become more and more dense until I could no longer see what was inside. And there we both sat, he in his cocoon and me, very carefully, in my chair. The quilt normally shifted as I got in and out of the chair. Now, with this other being behind me, I was especially mindful of pulling his half of the quilt down before his square migrated too close to my head.

At this point, the cocoon appeared to be completely filled by the moth-to-be. [Photo by Cathie Bird]

It was awesome to share my chair with this little being. The chair had become a sacred space. My thoughts would often go to this mystery unfolding behind my head as I read or watched the Tube. When would he come out? What would he look like? Was the environment in my house even appropriate for hosting this event?

This process coincided with my initiation of a new website. I was going through a professional metamorphosis of sorts, trying to find some space to present my practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy and my reflections on mind, emotions and liberation of the true, spiritual Self in a way that reflected the evolution of my experience with it. It struck me as both auspicious and synchronous to have one of nature’s prime examples of transformative process unfolding in the same home space at the same time. I decided to add images of the caterpillar and cocoon to my website’s home page.

Finally, one day I came out into daybreak to find a flat spot of silky web where the cocoon had been. I carefully looked around the chair to find the…whatever it was. A few squares down I found what appeared to be a moth. I decided to call it a Chair Moth.

Woohoo! The Chair Moth is born! [Photo by Cathie Bird]

The Chair Moth sat in that same spot on the quilt for 2 or 3 more days, then disappeared. A week or two later I was sitting in my chair and noticed a large moth near the lamp. I had been keeping my camera close by, as I tend to have many interesting crawlers and flyers in the house during the warmer months. When I got close enough for a picture, the resemblance of this adult moth to the one that had emerged from the cocoon was close enough for me to think that this was indeed the Chair Moth.

The adult Chair Moth returns to the light for a visit. [Photo by Cathie Bird]

I saw him off and on for several weeks. He had many opportunities to leave the house but didn’t. I think he lived his whole life in here. A couple of months later I found him dead, about 20 feet from the chair where he had played out his awesome transformation.

 

The furry legs made me think that this was indeed the Chair Moth. [Photo by Cathie Bird]

I had intended to add an image of whatever came out of the cocoon to my website, but I never got around to it. I did some major reconfiguration of blogs and websites last fall, moving everything to blog format and abandoning my websites. In this process, I had several ideas about finishing the story of the Chair Moth and some ideas about where to post it. At the end of 2009, I had decided to put it here at The Daily R-r-r-ibbit, but as the year 2010 launched I still didn’t have it up. I guess it just wasn’t time to finish it.

In my last entry, The Gift of Uncertainty, I talked about some ideas that arose in connection with the transition of my brother-in-law, David Close, on January 8th. He fell asleep in his favorite chair and just went on from there. My sister (or someone else) had placed a meaningful quotation along with what looked like David’s journal on the chair. It had the sense of sacred space.

I have always thought that dying in my sleep -- well, that, or doing something I really loved doing -- would be a great way to go. I couldn’t come up with anything I really wanted to say at David’s memorial service, but it came to me yesterday that he might have liked my Chair Moth story, and that he might be having a good laugh now that I’ve woven his chair-based transition into my account of the Chair Moth’s metamorphosis.

So here’s to the spirit of my friend, the Chair Moth, and here’s to you, Brother Dave, as your spirit takes wing from Earth’s cocoon to explore other dimensions of life.
 

Grandpa Fred, Grandma Gertrude, Chris, Pennie and David (and Colonel, the Brittany Spaniel) [Photo by Cathie Bird]

Hawks in the Holler

Lots of hawk sightings in Frog Pond Hollow lately -- other than me, that is.

Today I watched one circle around a little before it disappeared into the forested southeastern slope of Sexton Mountain. Just a few seconds later a whole bunch of crow noises erupted. The crows cawed out for 2 to 3 minutes straight before I heard a hawk voice in the middle of it all. I didn't have my field glasses so couldn't really see anything even though most of the trees on Sexton have ditched their leaves.

After several more minutes of what sounded like a substantial avian disagreement, the hawk flew out from the direction of a tree that still had leaves -- very red ones. He did kind of a parallel side-hill pass, never rising above the ridge line, then flew back in toward the same tree, at which point the crow sounds increased in amplitude, never really having stopped.

The crow rant continued several more minutes, with occasional hawk voice counterpoint. Even Shadow was staring up toward the mountain by then. Eventually the hawk came out again but this time resumed intentional circles overhead, each pass shifting a little more to the east. He was close enough that I took a chance on catching some images.

The one of him (or her?) below is the best one I got of this week's multiple sightings. It's not great but it is fairly clear that it's a red-tailed hawk, a species with which this human Hawk in the holler has some affinity. So I decided to put it in.

A Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) circles above Hudson Branch, Campbell County, Tennessee (Photo by Cathie Bird)