Today there’s a melange of photos from several readers, two of whom sent in only one photograph. One of these was reader Tim Anderson, who provide a picture of this gorgeous bird:
This is a blue-faced honeyeater (Entomyzon cyanotis), complete with breakfast for one of its chicks. The juveniles from last year’s hatching assist in building the nest and feeding the young.
The pic was taken 22 November in Tumut, New South Wales. This one is a male, though the female looks identical but slightly smaller. Two chicks in the nest, three adults doing the feeding.
Joe McClain took this picture in a town with which I’m well familiar: Williamsburg, Virginia, where I went to college:
Heeding your call for wildlife photos to fill the bucket, here is a barred owl (Strix varia) perching in a tree in my front yard. We have a lot of these around the house and I particularly like to hear them duetting at night.
Reader Andre Schuiteman sent two photos from Cambodia:
Both images were taken in November 2013 in the forests of the Cardamom Mountains in Southwest Cambodia, where I took part in a plant hunting trip organised by Kew Gardens and the Cambodia Forest Administration.
We were about thirty miles from the nearest coast, so I was quite surprised to encounter this fairly large crab (about 9 cm wide) walking on a path in the middle of the forest. It was missing a few legs, but otherwise seemed fit enough to assume a threatening pose and attack a little stick with which I gently challenged it. It didn’t run away like crabs on the beach tend to do, but maybe the missing legs had something to do with that. I like its expressive, mask-like ‘face’.
Do any readers know the species?
The large, deep brown butterfly was sitting with wings spread on a tree trunk. Because of its inconspicuous colour I might have missed it if it hadn’t been for the mass of whitish fungal fruiting bodies that poked out of its body and even from part of the wings and legs. I suspect that this nightmarish fungus, probably a species of Cordyceps, had killed the unfortunate insect. It’s a good thing that people are not attacked and devoured in this way.
Again, if any readers know the species of butterfly, tell us below.
And four beautiful moths from reader Tony Eales:
NOTE: I forgot (but was reminded in the comments below) that I published photos of these moths before, on October 31 (I plead overwork rather than age). But they’re so beautiful that I’m going to let they stay up again.
Here are four moths I’ve photographed. Three were on my trip to Borneo in around 2004 and were attracted to the light at outside the room I stayed in on Mt Kinabalu. I don’t even know where to begin in working out their family let alone species. The fourth is a Hawk Moth genus Theretra I photographed at Goondiwindi a couple of years ago.
Again, identifications of the first three appreciated.
Now this is some nice crypsis (camouflage)!:
Have we had those moths beefore..?
I would bet the crab is a freshwater species – are the land crabs mostly hermit crabs?
I would guess it could regenerate limbs when it sheds its shell as spiders do…?
A good moth deserves a reprise!
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/readers-wildlife-photographs-42/
😉
Jebus, Dom, you have a better memory than I! Yes, they were published Oct. 31, as I’ve just found out (I’ve added this to the post). But they’re so gorgeous that I don’t remind a repost.
I have an eclectic mind – I can recall all sorts of titbits – but rarely things from my own life…!
The land crab resembles the Asian shore crab,
Hemigrapsus sanguineus, but I’m not sure.
There are many land crabs that are not hermit crabs, and they make good eatin’! Some get quite massive, like much bigger than a big hand with fingers extended. I remember as kids, my brothers and I would go crabbing when the crabs were ‘marching’ en masse. They’re great boiled up with Scotch Bonnet Habanero) peppers, pimento seeds, sea salt and onions.
Hmmmm…. on second thought, your crab sounds quite bigger than the Asian shore crab.
What a great set! The variety in the wing shapes of the moths makes me wonder – what’s up with that? Does one shape have an advantage over the other?
Isn’t part of it that slight variations will get exaggerated – biomprphs…
http://ultrastudio.org/en/Biomorphs
Sometimes, yes. Hawk moths are built for fast, direct flight coupled with hovering. Their wings are different from those adapted to fluttering, erratic flight. And a lot of the shapes, particularly around the edges, have to do not with flight but with camouflage. Finally, some of those visible difference just have to do with the way the moths happen to be holding their wings.
Entomyzon is my favorite honeyeater. Aside from its attractive blue face, it has its closest relatives in the genus Melithreptus, tiny little fellows that act like chickadees but whose plumage is nearly identical. In fact, it isn’t clear that Entomyzon doesn’t lie within Melithreptus. Is the blue-faced honeayeater a giant Melithreptus, or are the Melithreptus species all miniaturized Entomyzon? Either way, cool.
Driskell & Christidis (2004) got Foulehaio (which doesn’t look like a giant or midget) as sister to Entomyzon+Melithreptus, and the next couple of sister taxa also comprise medium-sized honeyeaters; if size acts as an ordered character, parsimony suggests the intermediate size is ancestral. (And anyone who thinks size doesn’t act like an ordered character lives in another universe.)
But Andersen et al. (2014) put Foulehaio in a new Polynesian clade that cuts across the topology of D&C, so maybe now we don’t know again.
I used to get Blue-faces in the backyard in Townsville, and was a bit shocked to see ‘Tumut’ (in the south-eastern high country) as the locality for the pic above, as I thought of it as a tropical bird. My impression from call and behaviour was that it was just a fancy-coloured Friarbird (cf. Anthochaera), but the mol-phyl stuff indicates that that’s convergence: big honeyeaters are just like that.
Sadly, Driskell & Christidis didn’t sample every species of Melithreptus. I’m still holding onto hope that the big one is nested within the little ones, and not just the sister group.
Somebody really ought to put up a Melithreptus photo (black-chinned, preferably) for comparison.
I meant to say Philemon (Friarbirds) rather than Anthochaera, which are Wattlebirds (also relatively big and noisy). Sleepy when I wrote that.
Toon et al. (2010) did sample all the species of Melithreptus, and it came out monophyletic with Entomyzon as sister group; but analysis with a wider set of outgroups would be good, seeing as Toon’s selection was based on the D&C phylogeny.
I saw a couple of Black-chinned HEs once on a Pilbara survey, got surprisingly close but no chance of a decent photo. Thought they were Pardalotes till seeing pattern details.
That blue of the first moth is hypnotizing. Love all the pictures and the bird’s face is so pretty. Owls always look huggable with all their feathers but the last thing an owl would want you to do is hug it!
I love owls, but you’re right they are, rather enthusiastically, NOT huggable.
We have little screech owls, sometimes referred to as hoot owls, on the southeast coast of Florida. They’re small for owls and are very cute. Their moniker is, however, an example of truth in advertising. Should you ever see one nestled in the grass and lean in to take a closer look, the bird’s favored response seems to be to emit a terrible howl and immediately commence a campaign to eat your face.
They’re cute, but they’re also a ball of feathers and anger management issues.
Yes, screech owls are really cute – they are all face – it’s how they trick you. Come close, look at my cute face, NOW DIE!! DIE YOU UNSIGHTLY WEIRD MAMMAL!
That’s pretty much it exactly.
A doe right under my dining room window, March of 2013, middle of BC Canada.
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Loved the pictures, especially the two birds.
About the honeyeater (how beautiful!): “Two chicks in the nest, three adults doing the feeding.” Talk about kin selection, eh? 🙂
Andre, I do love that crab’s face–like a boxy robot but aware. And that poor butterfly! When camouflage can’t help…
The four moths are lovely, with all that diversity of wing shape and color. And I like the little dipteran (?) in photo 3, as well. 🙂