Another post full of things that don’t fit in other posts.
I’ve noticed that something is causing chanterelle mushroom deformation this year. I’ve seen this happening in several different places so I was curious as to what might be causing it. After doing some reading on mushroom deformation I found that large amounts of water will cause deformation in chanterelles. That makes sense since we’ve had rain nearly every day for the last 3 weeks. This will not make mushroom hunters happy because chanterelles are considered a great delicacy.
This is what a chanterelle should look like. This one was growing very near to several deformed ones. Why some were deformed and others were not depends on their water intake, I suppose. It seems odd to see mushrooms taking in enough moisture to hurt themselves.
I stopped by a local tree to check on an old friend. This poplar sunburst lichen (Xanthomendoza hasseana) hasn’t gotten much bigger since the last time I saw it, but it’s still every bit as beautiful. The white material is new though, and I’m hoping it’s another lichen rather than some kind of disease.
Years ago when my son and daughter were little I planted a small Colorado blue spruce so we could have an outdoor lighted Christmas tree. I was looking at it the other day and noticed these strange growths on some branches that turned out to be galls, which are caused by a tiny insect called the eastern spruce gall Adelgid (Adelges abietis.) Thankfully the adelgids won’t kill the tree but if I prune the galls off before the eggs hatch it will interrupt their life cycle and put an end to the galls. I hope.
I used to work at a place with overhead lights that stayed on all night and in the morning the pavement under the lights would be covered with moth and other insect’s wings. The wings were all that was left after the bats had fed. I found this wing on a leaf. It looked like its owner had tangled with a spider web before becoming a snack.
Earlier in the season I posted some honey locust flowers that several people thought were black locust flowers. I didn’t have the above photo of black locust thorns or the one below of honey locust thorns to illustrate my explanation, but the thorns are the easiest way to tell the two plants apart. Black locust thorns always grow in pairs where the leaf petioles meet the stem and are relatively short.
Honey locust thorns grow singly and appear right out of the bark on branches and trunk. They can be 3 to 6 inches long and sometimes branch like the example in the photo. These are thorns that you don’t want to run into accidentally.
Canada geese usually turn their backs and walk away but this one seemed as interested in me as I was in him. (Or her.) Maybe it was the designated decoy, keeping me busy while the flock waddled off. There were probably thirty geese in this pasture, including goslings.
This dragonfly (or damsel fly) was deep indigo blue, including its wings, and was a very beautiful insect. I’ve looked online for it but can’t even find anything similar. I suppose that I should get an insect ID guide.
No need for a guide for Japanese beetles-I’ve known them for years. I have to say though, that I’ve never noticed the white dots like this one has. After doing some searching I found that these dots are the eggs of the tachinid fly, and once they hatch the larva will burrow into the beetle and eat it. Then they will become flies and lay eggs on even more Japanese beetles. This fly has been found to parasitize 20 percent of the Japanese beetles in Connecticut alone, so if you see a Japanese beetle with white spots, let it be. Biological control of a pest is a good thing.
Butterflies and bumblebees love knapweed, I’ve discovered. They seem to be so engrossed in the flowers that they ignore me completely and let me snap away as long as I want.
The yellow center of a common ox-eye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) is made up of tiny yellow disk florets that bloom from the edge of the disk to the center. These florets are perfect, meaning they have both male and female parts, while the white ray flowers, commonly called petals, are female. It is said that when these “petals” are pulled in the classic loves me / loves me not way the results are almost always favorable, because over 90 percent of ox-eye daisy flowers have an uneven number of petals.
Strong afternoon thunderstorms have plagued this part of the state for 3 weeks now, causing flash flooding in some areas and swelling rivers to bank-full conditions. The air is so saturated it feels like you’re swimming through it. Couple that with hot afternoon sunshine and you have the two things a thunderstorm needs to form. On almost any afternoon the thunderheads grow to tens of thousands of feet and then the downpours start at between 4 and 5 pm. I hope it is a lot drier wherever you are.
This is a recent view of the Ashuelot River, showing how close it is to the top of its banks. It’s also very muddy, meaning that it is carrying tons of New Hampshire soil to the Atlantic.
Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time. ~John Lubbock
Thanks for stopping in.
I was unfamiliar with the habits or happenings among geese before moving here to Utah and still find it interesting how they will gather in the fields, some cultivated and some fallow…and sometimes out in the long natural grasses. I like seeing them out there…. Very nice photos, Allen. Your river seems a bit different than I’m used to seeing it here. I hope you get to dry out a bit…and will gladly take some of your rain and thunderstorms over here. We’ve had a nice rainy spell, also, but always love more….
Our rainy afternoons did finally stop but the heat remains. We’ve had three weeks of 90 degree temps almost every day.
Great photographs, I love your bumble, it is different from European bumble bees but I suppose that’s to be expected.
Thanks. I didn’t know we had different bumble bees but as you say, I’m not surprised. I think our bees must be doing well here, judging by the amount of fruit I’m seeing.
Awesome photos!!!
Thanks!
Very enjoyable post!
Thanks!
Here also the rivers and lakes are very high.
I hope you don’t see much more rain then! They say we’re going to see the same afternoon thunderstorms every day next week.
Post the photo on bugguide.net and you’ll have an id in about an hour.
I used a honey locust thorn as a touchscreen stylus for years.
I didn’t know you could do that! You probably didn’t keep your honey locust stylus in your pocket, I’m guessing.
Another fine post packed with crisp pictures and interesting information. Your clouds are most impressive too.
Thank you. The clouds have been impressive but we’ve seen enough thunderheads to last us 2 summers.
Wow, the river is really running high, and too much water for mushrooms? I had never heard of that before.
Others have already IDed the damselfly, in addition to the eyes, the other way to tell them from dragonflies are the wings. Damselflies at rest hold their wings in line with and above their body. Dragonflies at rest hold their wings out, perpendicular to their body.
The great thing about nature, you’ll never run out of interesting things to see, as this post demonstrates very well.
I’ve never heard of mushrooms getting sick from too much water either but according to what I’ve read about mushroom deformation, it happens often.
Thanks for the tip on how to ID dragon / damsel flys. That’s a good one because the wings are easy to see.
That’s true-everytime I think I might have things figured out nature proves me wrong. I’m glad that it works that way, too.
Re the damselfly – an ebony jewelwing maybe? Although most guides say they are green, a few say they can be dark green OR blue. And they seem to be one of the few that have solid dark wings.
Thank you-I was just wondering if they could also be blue as I was commenting to Mike Powell. There is no doubt that it is a damselfly and that narrows down the options considerably! You flicker photos are excellent-you should do a blog!
Thanks! I finally got myself a decent camera just recently and have been having a lot of fun with it. Sadly, I’ve never been disciplined enough to do any regular blogging. 🙂
Nature blogging can take up a lot of your time, but it depends on how often you post.
If you hadn’t been looking closely, you’d never have seen the galls. They blend in almost perfectly. Amazing what nature does to camouflage things. I hope to find LOTS of beetles with white dots! I have a pond in my yard with lots of frogs in it. I love to catch the beetles that are feasting on my roses and shake them up in a jar until they are senseless and then throw them into the pond to feed the frogs! The frogs seem to know when I am going to do this because they all start swimming to my side of the pond.
That’s interesting-I never knew you could train frogs. I know you can do the same with fish like Japanese Koi, so why not froms? Thos spruce galls are indeed quite small so you have to look closely.
Wonderful images. I love the close-ups of the thorns and the daisy especially. Your blue insect is definitely a damselfly, not a dragonfly. (Damselflies have the eyes totally separated, while dragonflies eyes are closer together.) I poked around a bit on the insect websites and wonder if your damselfly might be an Ebony Jewelwing damselfly. Your shot looks a little like some of these photos at Bugguide. http://bugguide.net/node/view/601
Thanks for the dragon / damselfly information Mike. It’s hard to find an insect in a guide when you don’t even know what it is! It does look a lot like the jewelwing damselfly, only the bug guide photos look more black than this one was. It was the most beautiful blue I’ve ever seen on an insect. Maybe their color can vary, like flowers. Thanks again for the information!