Since it is Sunday, we need a sunny picture and this yellow flower is a sunny type of flower.
Sunny Flower
Picture of the Day for July 20, 2013
The cooler dawn ushered in a very vocal choir of birds this morning although the hummingbird just added some ‘chee-dit’ and buzzing to the mix. The Ruby-throated Hummingbird, which beats its wings about 53 times a second, is eastern North America’s sole breeding hummingbird.
Scientists place hummingbirds and swifts in the same taxonomic order, the Apodiformes. The name means “without feet,” which is certainly how these birds look most of the time. The extremely short legs of the Ruby-throated Hummingbird prevent it from walking or hopping. The best it can do is shuffle along a perch. Nevertheless, it scratches its head and neck by raising its foot up and over its wing.
In 1980, the hummingbird, known as “the bird of hope”, became the official symbol of the International Diabetes Federation, partly because of its association with sugar, and party because of its association with control and precision.
And this guy certainly had the control and precision to chase away any other hummingbird that approached the feeder he was guarding.
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
Picture of the Day for July 19, 2013
I’m not sure if the smiley face is because it is Friday or because the temperature is supposed to get cooler today. But for whatever reason, you can’t help but smile too.
Smiley Face
Picture of the Day for July 18, 2013
Sometimes when going in close for a flower picture, you might encounter something else besides the flower. These flowers were attracting a lot of honey bees and this longhorn beetle. Commonly known as the Red Milkweed Beetle, it is also called Milkweed Borers and Four-eyed beetles. The “four eyes” refer to the way the socket of an antenna divides each compound eye in two, resulting in a “lower eye” and an “upper eye”.
Normally this beetles are found on milkweeds, hence their name, but this guy seems to find this leaf very tasty. It is said that these beetles will “squeak” when held and purr when feeding on milkweeds. I didn’t hold him to see if that is true so I guess I will have to try that the next time I see a Red Milkweed Beetle.
About the time that milkweed buds are swelling and beginning to flower, these small black-dotted red beetles will emerge looking for a mate and the female will lay her eggs on the stem near ground level. The young will bore into the stem to feed and eventually bore to the roots to spend the winter emerging in the spring to start the cycle again.
Milkweeds have fairly potent toxins, and the insects that eat milkweed become, in turn, toxic. Such insects are often colored in bright red or orange to advertise that fact and less likely to be eaten by birds.
Red Milkweed Beetle
Picture of the Day for July 17, 2013
It appear this is the ‘dog days of summer’. The Old Farmer’s Almanac lists the traditional period of the Dog Days as the 40 days beginning July 3rd and ending August 11th, coinciding with the ancient heliacal (at sunrise) rising of the Dog Star, Sirius. These are the days of the year with the least rainfall in the Northern Hemisphere. And it is definitely hot here this week.
Dog Days were popularly believed to be an evil time “the Sea boiled, the Wine turned sour, Dogs grew mad, and all other creatures became languid; causing to man, among other diseases, burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies.” according to Brady’s Clavis Calendaria, 1813.
The Romans sacrificed a brown dog at the beginning of the Dog Days to appease the rage of Sirius, believing that the star was the cause of the hot, sultry weather. So it is a good thing this dog is black and white!
Dog Days of Summer
Picture of the Day for July 16, 2013
On hot summer days, even the sunsets appear ‘hotter’ than normal even if they might give rays of hope that the weather would return to more comfortable temperatures.
Hot Summer Sunset
Picture of the Day for July 15, 2013
Last night I took my cat for a walk down by the pond and he was busy trying to catch frogs, tadpoles and dragonflies. One frog was pretty smart and jut stayed perched on a floating cattail in the water instead of staying by the shore like the other frogs who would have to jump back into the water on the next loop my cat made around the pond.
When approached, green frogs will typically leap into the safety of the water while letting out a loud cry. Hence, the old nickname ‘the screaming frog’. Their normal call is explosive, prolonged, and low-pitched producing a twang similar to the sound of plucking the bass string of a banjo, usually given as a single note, but sometimes repeated several times. Usually I see the ripples in the water after their croak and spot them that way more than the sound.
Northern green frogs will eat any living things they can capture and swallow and are opportunistic feeders, who normally sit patiently in the water or close to shore and wait for prey. Apparently they couldn’t swallow my cat since he passed by several times without being eaten.
My pond is always full of tadpoles and now I know why since after the eggs hatch in 3 to 7 days, the green frog tadpoles take 2 to 22 months to metamorphosis into full grown frogs. And since there were so many in my pond that my cat had to try to catch, he was a rather muddy cat and I refused to carry him home so he wasn’t allowed to play that ‘I have a broken leg and can’t walk’ trick last night.
Perched Green Frog
Picture of the Day for July 14, 2013
The July summer days are being filled with beautiful lilies blooming. Oranges, yellow, red and pinks dot the landscape.
Summertime Lily
Picture of the Day for July 13, 2013
Having the windows open when a cool breeze is blowing is always a treat in the summer but that also means you can hear the screaming kids outside. And this week, the crying kids are the baby Baltimore Orioles who sit near the sugar water feeder and screams until one of the parents tanks up on the juice and delivers it to the screaming kid. Grape jelly is another way to feed the screaming babies.
Baltimore Orioles prefer darkest colored berries, ignoring green and yellow berries even if ripe. And when they find dark berries, they will stab the berry with a closed bill and then open their mouth to cut a juicy swath to drink the juices.
The young males do not molt into the bright orange plumage until the fall of their second year but sometimes the drab first-year young males will attract a mate and raise a family. The females become deeper orange each time they molt and some older females can be almost as bright orange as a male.
Baltimore Oriole Eating Jelly
Picture of the Day for July 12, 2013
The need for barbed wire arose in the 19th century as the American frontier moved westward into the Great Plains and traditional fence materials—wooden rails and stone—became scarce and expensive. Of the many early types of barbed wire, the type invented in Illinois in 1873 by Joseph F. Glidden proved most popular.
Glidden fashioned barbs on an improvised coffee bean grinder, placed them at intervals along a smooth wire, and twisted another wire around the first to hold the barbs in a fixed position. His U.S. patent was issued November 24, 1874 and the patent survived court challenges from other inventors. Joseph Glidden prevailed in litigation and in sales. Today, it remains the most familiar style of barbed wire.
Joseph Glidden’s wire fences were cheaper to erect than their alternatives and when they became widely available in the late 19th century in the United States they made it affordable to fence much bigger areas than before. Joseph Farwell Glidden’s simple invention, barbed wire, changed forever the development of the American West.
Barbed Wire
