bb's industry rewarded by nature, pays it forward 2 U!

  
These are some of the things I came upon during this morning's outdoor flurry of hosing the sidewalk (watching the lemon yellow pollen foam wash away--yikes!!!) and our screens and other things right near our windows which facilitate the placement of TINY pollen grains in my eyes, nose, throat, ears, skin, etc.

These shots are all big, today, so feel free to click on them and zoom in to get a better look.

The first is the moth, which has rich orange in its hindwings, but I didn't catch that via camera. I scared it up from the grass via hosing.

This looks like the one that skepticalmoth said was Noctua pronuba "an invasive species introduced to the east coast from Europe a few decades ago. Not a horrible invasive, they feed mostly on grasses and are common around houses/lawns."

Any expertise input re: id would be greatly appreciated.

Next, this beauty was posing nicely by the second faucet that I moved our super-short hose to in order to continue with the pollen spraying.

Isn't she pretty?!? And rather regal. Very poised.

Woah, I was GOING to call this Pseudacris regilla, feeling all smart 'cause I knew that what USED to be called Hyla regilla is now Pseudacris regilla.

Yeah, well, in reading Wikipedia and CaliforniaHerps.com, looks like what I have is a Sierra treefrog, Pseudacris sierra--check out the distribution map on CaliforniaHerps.com. Apparently MOST of what I'll encounter is now called Pseudacris sierra, including where I'll be doing field work NEXT WEEK, so good to know.

Love how this blog keeps me learning.

Isn't she gorgeous? I'm assume, based on sizable ROUND belly, this is a lady and she's gravid.

So, then, after hosing off the north side of the house, I return the hose to it's original site, and see this:

I took about 7 shots of this TINY spider (note it's dwarfed by water droplet) and only this LAST one was sharp and WOW, what a difference! Click and zoom in, this one is especially rewarding.

What a beauty! Anyone have a guess what it is? It looks like a crab spider, to me...

By the way, I was SO industrious (dumping out and WASHING and drying litter boxes, hosing down sidewalk, screens, pulling weeds out of sidewalk, spraying the cars) this morning, that Bear said, before taking off, "I don't know what's wrong with you, but I'm not going to do anything to fix it."

=)

bb can be phenomenally LAZY and blob-like, so this is a happy occasion.

Years ago, we were camping. FYI, I am not super skilled re: outdoors, but I pride myself on breaking camp like a bandit (FAST FAST FAST). Like get OUT of my way or you may end up rolled up and stuffed into a duffel bag, then the trunk (erf!).

Right after we got up, Bear wandered off to powder his nose. The moment he left I decided to see if I could break camp and get EVERYTHING back in the car before he returned. So I was speed packing, collapsing poles like my hair was on fire, cramming sleeping bags into stuff sacks, etc. but, alas, I was not QUITE done when Bear returned.

However, he did remark, smiling quietly while I madly flung pillows into the car: "You're cute when you're industrious." =) So, I felt like I'd won.


Anyhow, the animals pictured above are the lovelies who showed themselves to me during my cleaning mania, leaving me richly rewarded. Thus, I wanted to share the wealth with you.

I hope your weekend is going wonderfully.

xoxoxo

biobabbler

* I really DO need to figure out how to add a page to my blog to assemble all the species that have been identified... Any of y'all know how to do that in blogger? I can do SOME HTML but don't really feel like doing this whole thing from scratch, so if you know of a reasonably simple way to add a page, I'd GREATLY appreciate your tossing me a clue.