August « 2012 « verdure
the abbreviated running from mosquitoes edition
Monday, August 13th, 2012

With it well into the full heat of summer, we’ve not been visiting many parks. We gave Little Manatee River State Park a try in later July. There’s now a separate pay station for the north of the river loop trail ($3 instead of the $5 for the main park). Not surprisingly, we were surrounded by mosquitoes as soon as we stepped out of the pickup. Mike took the camera (the following are all his) so that I could keep moving, but we gave up after a few minutes on the trail and turned back. A pair of hikers in shorts and with hiking poles had arrived at the trailhead when we got back. I always wear long pants on hikes. In my opinion any cooling, which I really don’t find to be that much in hot sun anyway, is negated by exposed skin for bug bites.

leaf

golden silk spider

red spots

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insects and arachnids
Wednesday, August 8th, 2012

These are from a trip to Sawgrass Lake Park in mid June.

I’m not sure if these are aphids. They don’t look like the aphids I’ve seen on fruit trees before, and are smaller than the pictures on the net relative to the ant’s size, but these ants were certainly tending them.

tend

brown anole

anole

seven legged golden silk spider

golden

This black and yellow garden spider was busy building its web, acrobating its way around on the support threads

webbing

broad winged katydid

katy

there was a lot of this vine around the park this time. I believe its an invasive called air potato

air

Mike took this one. Beautiful helmet eyes.

orange

At the end of our walk, something bitey must have gotten caught under my camara bag strap because I had huge itchy welts along my back by the time we got home. And all I got for it was this butterfly picture, probably a black swallowtail.

tail

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