The Green Frog

On a beautiful spring morning, when Mishy was going on a discovery walk, she almost stepped heel to toe on a little green frog!  It wasn't really all her fault, for the frog did his best to make sure he was hidden...but not well enough!


Just before going into the water with her foot, Mishy noticed something pop up above the water's surface.  A closer look, she saw 2 bulging eyeballs look up at her from a pale green head! 


Startled and shaken, the frog looked up at Mishy and simply said, "do you want a game of cricket?" to which made Mishy laugh and reply, "no sir! I almost stepped on you!"  to which the frog replied, "I thought you were going to eat me, so I changed my color to brown right away! I only live for 3 or 4 years, so I would like to enjoy them!"  and with that Mishy decided to sit down on a rock close to her new friend, Mr. Green. 


Promptly she asked him where he had been all winter long, because he had no fur or coat to wear, so she was curious!  "I was fine! my gal friend and I just found a neat little spot together at the bottom of a lake in some mud"  Mishy stood up straight and pointed to Mr. Green and said "That's not true! How could you possibly breathe all through the winter at the bottom of a lake?!"  Mr. Green just shook his head and said, "you don't know much about frogs, do you?  We can breathe from our lungs and our skin, so when its cold, our bodies shut down and we become lazier, so we can breathe fine just through our skin alone until the temperature gets a little warmer.." With that Mr. Green went back down under the water to bury himself into the mud.


"Wait!!" called out Mishy,  "Don't go! I didn't know, that is pretty amazing! I sometimes wish that I could live under the water too..."After a minute or so Mr. Green emerged once more in a full and beautiful lime green color onto the rock beside her.  After a bit of silence, Mr. Green said, "how did you get here anyways?" to which Mishy smiled, "In a VW Beetle of course!!" Laughter was heard from the other little critters in Crooks Hollow...and soon under the days sun, they all came together for a little game of Cricket until the sun came down in Mishy's Small World.

Green six-spotted tiger beetle

Mishy has been noticing a pretty scary looking little green fella in and around the woods lately!  Actually the last time I seen this green, shiny spotted beetle, he seemed quite comfortable on the cement too!  Luckily I didn’t step on him, so I reached out and got closer to him only to notice he had 1-2-3-4-5-6 polka dots on his back wing! 

This is why he’s called the 6-spotted Tiger beetle!  Much like its distant cousin, the carrion this little guy loves the water, and is found most often close by watershed, or floodplains, muddy creek banks and really anywhere where there is lots of plant life!  

In the grown up world of biologists, this little guy is considered a PREDATOR! and very AGGRESSIVE because they eat bugs like crickets, fleas, gnats and even cute little grasshoppers (Mishy’s favorite). 

On a good note, Mishy has come to realize that everything serves a purpose and for this reason, a large tiger beetle will feed on spiders and other pesky bugs and have become known as a great helper for our gardens and our farmer fields!  

Oh one last thing, don’t ever be discouraged if you haven’t spotted one for longer than 10 seconds, they are clocked as the fastest moving insects ever, so it was gone before I could say thank you!

Mourning Cloak Butterfly

While walking through a brushy creek valley on a warm spring day, Mishy saw many butterflies overhead.  There must have been hundreds of them! On closer inspection though, there were only two!  Probably a husband and a wife because they were chasing each other around through the poplars and elm trees that hovered above me coming to rest together on a wild rose bush close by. 

A closer look I noticed their rich burgundy colored wings outlined with creamy white border.  I never saw this type of butterfly in Mishy’s small world, although they are the most widespread of all butterflies!  If you haven’t guessed yet what they are called, they are called the “Mourning Cloak”.  What a fitting name for them! The scientific name is Nymphalis antiopa, but I can’t pronounce that properly so I will like their other name better!

By the end of the day, the number of insect-eating birds increased dramatically, but even under the baking sun, all signs of the mourning cloaks disappeared up and down the creek valley.

Ladybug

Remember when you were a kid, and  you were either lonely, sick or sad?  Then a ladybug appears on your finger or if you're lucky rests herself on the tip of your nose and as you look into her eyes, you feel better?  Mishy had another visitor by her favorite riverbank in her small world.  First she flew quickly passed me and landed quite close to me.  I asked her to stay still 'if you please, because soon winter will come and I know you are cold blooded and you will hibernate during the winter.  So I might never see you again" and with that, she stayed still for me to take her picture.

I had to be quick because her little wings actually beats over 80 times a second! That's even faster than a hummingbird who beats 50 times a second.

A lady bug is a sort of beetle and she wears either an orange or red dress with black spots or in some parts of the world, she will don a black dress with red spots!  In choosing, well naturally selecting these clothes she is actually very smart, because in the natural world her bright colored clothing is often viewed as unsafe or unpleasant to eat.  So birds won't eat her and if that fails, she's got another trick up her sleeve and she just falls to the ground and plays dead.

Tiny lady bugs can eat aphids which can destroy crops and plants and her name actually came from a Legend that dates back as far as the Middle Ages at a time in Europe where crops were being damaged by pests.  Farmers began praying to the Blessed Lady, The Virgin Mary, and well legend says that soon lady bugs began to appear and saved the fields from pests! So you see this is when her new adoptive name was lady beetle, which through time she has been introduced simply as "LadyBug".  She's been known to bring luck and good fortune and Mishy was sure fortunate enough to have seen her.

Grasshopper on the river bank

While sitting on the water's edge waiting for a view of a salmon or trout, Mishy had a great surprise!  I looked down beside me and there on the grass sat a tiny grasshopper!  At first it didn't really look alive let alone look much like a grasshopper.  It blended in so well with the dead leaves on the grass, I wasn't quite sure what it was.  But suddenly it seemed to look up at me as if to say, "well, are you going to take a picture or am I going to have to wait here all day?" So with that, I grabbed my camera from my bag as he  patiently waited for me to find the correct setting to take the most perfect shot my camera has ever taken so close up!  I thank you wherever you are.

Shrinking Plants and Animals!

By now you must have heard about the effects of global warming on our planet.  Changes in temperatures, extreme weather changes like droughts, heat waves, tsunamis.  There is less oxygen in our oceans and shrinking glaciers! It's all pretty sad and scary stuff!

Now recent studies have shown further results that many of our species of plants and animals are also shrinking because of warmer temperatures and lack of water.  This is probably the scariest thing to happen in Mishy's Small and Shrinking World!

Spiders, beetles, ants, cicadas and my favorite insect of all, bees have all shrunk because of climate change.  Shoots and fruit are between 3-17% smaller and fish have shrunk up to 22% for each degree of warming! But there is hope and evidence is seen in all life forms.  One simple word, adaptability.  Darwin calls it, Natural selection.  Whatever changes occur in climate change or  its effects, life forms will adapt.  

The Grasshopper

There is nothing quite so whimsical as a grasshopper!  They're fast as lightning and chirp like birds!  If you've ever tried catching one, you know how difficult it is.  Mishy saw one along the road and it stayed until she got her camera ready (I guess grasshoppers like having their pictures taken too!). 

I didn't bother trying to pet it, it would have most likely seen my hand coming any ways with one of it's 5 eyes! Yes thats right! Grasshoppers have 5 eyes (3 of them they call simple and 2 are compound).  With all of these eyes they can see far away, backwards, forwards and even sideways!  That's very fortunate for them, but they don't have a nose so they have to breathe out of holes along the side of their bodies.

Did you know that there are over 10,000 different kinds of grasshoppers?  They love to eat corn, oat, barley, clover and wheat so some farmers don't like them too much!  But they can still be helpful to farmers by eating poisonous weeds and leaving nutrients in the soil.  So the next time you see one, please don't try and catch it and let them work their magic instead! They may even smile for the camera! 

The Queen Hornet!

I was walking through an abandoned field the other day, when I looked down and noticed a dead grasshopper on the foot path.  I bent down to take a closer look with my camera, when a bee buzzed and hovered and landed on it.  I was scared to move, and wondered what interest a bee had in the grasshopper any ways!  When I came home, I read more about what I saw and what I saw had amazed me!  

Turns out it wasn't a bee after all!  It was a hornet instead! Hornets, they say are the most eusocial insects of all.  They are actually very gentle and social and in fact even shy and prefer to evade conflict outside of their nesting area. They have been given to myths and stories about their stingers being lethal when truthfully they are no more dangerous than a bee or wasp sting.

Now for the story of what really goes on in and around the Hornets' world!   It is a sad but true tale, and I will share it with you.  As it was October, what I was looking at here was actually a hornet carrying food back to the nest.  Back in April, the Queen Hornet left her winter hideaway to build a little nest where she would put down her first egg.  In a few weeks' time, possibly in May, the larvae would hatch and soon would go through metamorphosis (these larvae will eventually become her "workers").  Shortly after in June, the Queen Hornet was attacked by an intruder in the nest.  Soon her first worker reached adulthood.  By the end of June, Queen Hornet was attacked once again by the invader, but this time her 4 adult workers had killed off the invader.  By the end of July there were too many workers (over 180!) so they had to find a new place to nest.  So they had relocated.   In the beginning of August, the Queen Hornet laid down more eggs which would eventually become males and females (Young queens).  Well I guess you can sort of figure out what happens next.  By the end of the month both the males and females had emerged into adult hornets. Two months later, roughly around some time in October, the Queen Hornet dies.  Death by malnutrition from neglect from her workers.  Soon after her death, there will be the mating of the new male and female adults and the young queens will hibernate until April when the cycle will start over again.  The last of her workers will die in the first cold frost of November.  Told you it was sad, but I hope I haven't confused you! If I did, Watch THIS!

Monarch Butterfly

It was a beautiful August afternoon in a field of gold, walking with my son when he took the camera out of my hands and in a moment a shot was taken of a beautiful little monarch butterfly.  In fields, bugs and flies run rampant and thrive.  So if you want to capture a view or a touch from anything smaller than your hand, the fields are where its at.  

Milkweed

In fact if you ever want to see a monarch butterfly, I guarantee you will find them in a field where milkweed exist.  That's because milkweed is the only plant that a monarch butterfly's larvae ever eat! So now you know how to attract a monarch butterfly to your garden! Just plant some milkweed seeds.  The female lays her eggs just on the underside of the milkweed leaves.  Depending on the temperature, the eggs will hatch in about 3 to 12 days later.  These eggs will eat the plant for about 2 weeks and then, can you guess what the larvae grows into? 

That's right..a caterpillar!  In a while the caterpillar gets bored so he just hangs around, well rather hangs upside down on a nearby branch for a few hours while its outer skin is shed and he enters into the chrysalis stage for about two weeks before he becomes transformed into a beautiful monarch butterfly!  

Time lapse film on the stages of the monarch butterfly