The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning
Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
Taking & making images.
Even though cicadas are completely harmless, Mary was quite startled to discover one crawling up the back of her garden pants:
It seems the cicada mistook her for a tree.
They’re handsome creatures:
They’re very conspicuous on fabric:
I teleported it to a maple tree, where it was better camouflaged:
When last seen, it was headed upward at a pretty good pace. We wished it well on its adventures …
Mary found this gadget gnawing holes in a bean:
The lump on the right is frass, not a mini-me tagging along behind.
We had no clue what it might be when it grew up, but Google Lens suggested a Striped Hairstreak Butterfly caterpillar and, later that day (and for the first time ever!), we saw an adult Hairstreak fluttering on a goldenrod in the corner of the garden.
As with all caterpillars, you’d never imagine the adult butterfly. It seems they move their hind wings to make predators aim at the south end of a northbound butterfly …
A Praying Mantis has once again taken up watching over the Butterfly Bush:
I made a slight noise that prompted an immediate weapons lock:
We’ve watched her stalk and capture a bumblebee, as well as chow down on one of the myriad moths feeding on the bush at night.
As always, if I were smaller, I’d be worried …
A Rudbeckia Black-eyed-susan coneflower from the garden carried a passenger to our patio table:
Even linearized, the inchworm was barely 20 mm long; it’s the thought that counts.
The stamens mature in concentric rings, each stamen topped by a pollen grain. Apparently, those grains are just about the most wonderful food ever, as the inchworm made its way around the ring eating each grain in succession:
Of course, what goes in must come out:
I had to brush off the table before washing it; the pellets are dry, but smear when you get them wet.
Another flower in the vase held a 10 mm inchworm with plenty of upside potential:
After nearly a week, the flowers were done and the inchworms had moved on. We wish them well, although we likely won’t recognize them in the future.
These Praying Mantis nymphs may have emerged from the ootheca I rescued from the grass trimming operation earlier this year:
The closest one was about 60 mm long, with plenty of growing ahead in the next few months:
A few days later, I spotted a smaller one, maybe 40 mm from eyes to cerci, hiding much deeper in the decorative grass clump. Given their overall ferocity, it was likely hiding from its larger sibs.
They have also been stilting their way across the window glass and screens in search of better hunting grounds. My affixing their oothecae to another bush may have disoriented them at first, but they definitely know where their next meal comes from!
Perhaps as a bonus, a Katydid appeared inside the garage, stuck to the side of a trash can that Came With The House™ long ago:
I deported it outside, in hopes of increasing the world’s net happiness.
The stickers covering the can say “WPDH: A Decade of Rock ‘n’ Roll”, suggesting they date back to 1986, ten years after (Wikipedia tells me) WPDH switched from country to rock. Neither genre did much for me, so I never noticed.
A pair of wrens, having found the new entrance reducer entirely satisfactory, set up housekeeping in the front bird box and raised their nestlings.
Somehow, they manage to fly directly into the hole without stopping:
Outbound trips require a security check:
And away!
After those nestlings fledged, they began building a nest in one of the garden bird boxes a few hundred feet away. In short order, we’ll be awash in wrens!
I’m southbound on Rt 376, a.k.a. NYS Bike Route 9, riding inches to the right of the fog line on the only sliver of navigable asphalt remaining after NYS DOT applied homeopathic scab patches along this section:
On the northbound side, another cyclist rides the sliver of pavement between the fog line and the gravel ridge built up from the deteriorating patches, being overtaken by a huge pickup towing a full-width quad-wheel trailer full of lawn maintenance equipment. The driver has eased about as far toward the yellow line as possible to give the cyclist barely enough clearance:
I am not “taking the lane”, because I’m towing a trailer of groceries and there’s always overtaking traffic coming around the blind curve behind me:
You can’t hear the car’s horn, but it’s right in my ear.
The white patches beside and behind the trailer are the fog line paint on the original asphalt surface showing through the disintegrating scab patch. Cyclists cannot ride safely on broken pavement with half-inch discontinuities, which is why I’m to the right of the fog line, mostly off the edge of the patch. If I “took the lane” as expected by NYS DOT, I would be riding about two feet into the lane, in line with the car’s right headlight, to avoid the wheel-grabbing longitudinal fissures showing through the scab patch.
Elapsed time: 10 seconds.
Just another day of bicycling on NYS Bike Route 9, one of the roads NYS DOT makes “safe and functional for all users.”
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 