Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
We often have supper on the patio, with a fly swatter at the ready, but honeybees get special treatment:
Honeybee on cooked squash
She surveyed both our plates, landed on my cooked squash, and probed into the crevices as she would to extract nectar from a flower. The weather has been dry for the last few days and we think she was looking for anything providing a bit of moisture.
I splashed some water on the table and plopped that part of the squash nearby, in the hopes she’d find what she needs. We’ll never know the end of the story.
We kept fresh milkweed branches in a vase and the caterpillar ate almost continuously:
Monarch caterpillar – 2017-08-13
By August 15, the caterpillar was ready for the next stage in its life. At 10 in the morning it had attached itself to the screen covering the aquarium and assumed the position:
The discarded skin remained loosely attached until I carefully removed it.
What look like small yellow spots are actually a striking metallic gold color.
Eleven days later, on August 26 at 9 AM, the chrysalis suddenly became transparent:
Monarch chrysalis – ready – left
And:
Monarch chrysalis – ready – right
The shape of the butterfly becomes visible in reflected light:
Monarch chrysalis – ready – ventral detail
The gold dots and line remained visible.
The magic happened at 3 PM:
Monarch chrysalis – emerging – unfolding
The compacted wings emerge intense orange on the top and lighter orange on the bottom:
Monarch unfolding – left
The butterfly took most of the day to unfurl and stiffen its wings into flat plates:
Monarch unfolding – dorsal
And:
Monarch unfolding – right
By 8 PM it began exploring the aquarium:
Monarch unfolded – right
As adults, they sip nectar from flowers, but don’t feed for the first day, so we left it in the aquarium overnight.
At 10 AM on August 27, we transported it to the goldenrod in the garden, where it immediately began tanking operations:
Monarch on Milkweed – left
A few minutes later, it began sun-warming operations:
Monarch on Milkweed – dorsal
Mary watched it while she was tending the garden and, an hour or so later, saw it take off and fly over the house in a generally southwest direction. It will cross half the continent under a geas prohibiting any other action, eventually overwinter in Mexico with far too few of its compadres, then die after producing the eggs for a generation beginning the northward journey next year.
Godspeed, little butterfly, godspeed …
In the spirit of “video or it didn’t happen”, there’s a 15 fps movie of the emergence taken at 5 s/image.
Mary confronted this critter in the garden, whereupon it fled into the compost bin:
Groundhog in the compost bin – front
She barricaded it with spare tomato cages across the bin’s entrance, I wedged an aluminum sheet behind the cages, and we got the stinkeye for our efforts:
Groundhog in the compost bin – left
I deployed the hose, watered it for a few minutes, and we left it to consider its options. Groundhogs are pretty much waterproof, but we hoped the wetdown would be sufficiently unpleasant to mark the garden as “Here be dragons” in its mental map.
After an hour, it had vanished. We know from past experience that groundhogs can climb up-and-over the chain link fence surrounding the compost bin (it was a dog pen for the previous owners), although it knocked down the aluminum sheet and may have exited through the garden.
An array of tiny eggs appeared on the outside of our bedroom window:
Insect eggs on glass – 2017-09-17
The patch measures 12 mm across and 14 mm tall. From across the room, it looks like a smudge, but it consists of hundreds of eggs, each on a tiny stalk glued to the glass:
IMG_20170919 vs 0917- Insect eggs on glass
The bottom image is two days later than the top one, both are scaled to about the same size and contrast. The critters look about the same, although I think the lines have more prominent ripples or bumps.
We have no idea what they’ll turn into, but they certainly look like they have two eyes and wings …
Once again, the season of orb-weavingspiders has arrived, with this one building her web across a living room window:
Orb Weaving Spider – with insect
I set the Sony HDR-AS30V atop a tripod, told it to take photos at 5 second intervals, then stitched the images into a Youtube video. It won’t go viral, but watching the spider construct her web over the course of two hours was fascinating.
She finishes the spiral at about 1 m video = 1.25 h real time, settles down for what might be a nap (it’s hard to tell with spiders), and has an insect join her for supper at 1:28, half an hour later. Spiders go from “inert” to “death incoming” almost instantly, even in real time running.
Another orb weaver set up shop in the adjacent window, but moved out the next day. Perhaps there’s a minimum spacing requirement?
Two more orb weavers guard windows in the kitchen and laundry room. We sometimes leave the lights on for them.
YouTube has other web-building videos with far more detail, of course.
The magic incantation to create the video from a directory of images in the form DSC01234.JPG:
sn=1 ; for f in *JPG ; do printf -v dn 'dsc%04d.jpg' "$(( sn++ ))" ; mv $f $dn ; done
ffmpeg -r 15 -i /mnt/video/2017-09-03/100MSDCF/dsc%04d.jpg -q 1 Orb-Weaving-2017-09-03.mp4
Moth 1, with wonderful antenna fringes identifying him as a male:
Spilosoma virginica 1 – right
Moth 2, a female with smaller antenna:
Spilosoma virginica 2 – right
Moth 3, another male:
Spilosoma virginica 3 – dorsal
The underside is diagnostic (ignore the crud on the aquarium glass):
Spilosoma virginica 3 – ventral
We set each one on the goldenrod plant inside the garden gate, whereupon they charged up in the sun for an hour or so, then flew off about their business. They may eat a few leaves in the garden, but they’re not particularly harmful to anything and entitled to a peaceful life.
I must organize all their pictures into a life history.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 