Miscellaneous Wanderings and Maunderings
Miscellaneous Wanderings and Maunderings
The monsoon rains have come, and I’ve been spending quite a bit of time watching tadpoles in temporary desert ponds and pools. Most of the pools I’ve found this year have not been in my usual cattle tanks and silty mud…
On our recent trip down to the Big Thicket in Texas, Laurie and I saw Sarracenia alata (“Pale Pitcher Plants”). That got me thinking about the Pitcher Plants that I used to see in New Hampshire. Those New Hampshire plants…
We had a windy, sunny day here in Southwestern Colorado. I decided to go out and take some Western Thatching Ant (Formica obscuripes) photographs. To get low angle photographs of the ants, I need to crouch (or lay down) near…
A few months ago, I was out roaming the Great Sage Plains with my Faithful Hound, Jack. We came to a series of clearings in the Sage, slightly raised hummocks that were covered with scattered rubble. Hmm. This looked like…
A couple of days ago, my wife and I were getting ready to roam the Sagebrush Desert. While she was saddling her horse, I went to check on one of my favorite local ant nests. This one was a beautiful…
In September of 2002, I was walking along a trail in Gardner Canyon, in Arizona’s Santa Rita Mountains. I noticed a 4-5′ high shrub on the side of the trail. It looked like some type of scrub oak, or Emory…
Ah, these are such marvelous ants. They are large, aware, alert, and relatively friendly to people. This one is posing in front of her nest entrance. They always seemed to have these relatively enormous nest entrances.
I was walking through one of the city parks in Cortez, Colorado a couple of days ago and came across what looked like a black, shiny liquid that had been poured onto the edge of the sidewalk. Looking a little…
After my recent photo sessions with Pogonomyrmex occidentalis, I decided that I would go and check on another of the Harvester Ant species that live in Southwestern Colorado – Pogonomyrmex rugosus, the Rough Harvester Ant. We don’t have Pogonomyrmex rugosus…
I took advantage of another sunny Spring day here in Southwestern Colorado to get some Pogonomyrmex occidentalis photos from our back yard. I figured the mostly-cool temperatures would keep the ants relatively sluggish, while the sunshine would get them just…