Reader Craig Carpenter sent a very artistic photo:
Beaver (Castor canadensis; photo by Judy Carpenter) on a small lake in North Georgia.
And from reader Colin Campbell:
I am sending a few pictures taken with my iPhone, insects from the south of France and an extra from Spain (plus lagniappe)
The first is a beautiful black waspish thing I saw sheltering on the inside of a window. I think it looks like an ichneumon and have tentatively identified it as Pimpla rufipes.
Second up is a true illegal immigrant! This I believe is a walnut husk fly, Rhagoletis completa, native to north america and an invader in Europe that is causing damage to native walnuts.
This I think is another invader enjoying our gapes in the evening sun, an asian hornet Vespa velutina nigrithorax (actually that might just be a local hornet)
Now to return in a roundabout way to a traditional topic of your website, is a Mantis religiosa (the predator that knows its creator – i just know there is a metaphor in there somewhere!) that was sitting on the courgette plant.
Lastly, a view of migrating Eurasian cranes [Grus grus] moving south for the winter last year (a bit far away, sorry). This is a bleak and lovely spot in central Spain where up to a a couple of hundred thousand cranes congregate to feed and rest on route. In the evening as the sun goes down they can be heard before they are seen as they come low overhead to roost by the waters edge for the night. Magical, though it is very cold in late November!
Finally, a landscape from reader Ken Phelps in British Columbia:
Sunrise yesterday at Nanaimo Lakes.
Hmmm. I thought the top picture was one of Nessie.
Whoa! That’s it! Now we know! Nessie is really a Gigantic Beaver created from a radiation experiment of the 1950’s gone terribly wrong!
(Yeah, I know the pic’s from N. Georgia. But hey, a quick trip across the Black Sea, up the Volga, across a bit of land, Baltic Sea, and you’re practically in Scotland.)
And yes, I’m in a Really Weird Mood this a.m.
I’m just guessing, but I reckon the photo was probably taken in Georgia, US not Georgia in the Caucasus! The fact that it is labelled Castor canadensis (American beaver) rather than Castor fiber (Eurasian beaver)would support this supposition.
Having said that, a trek to the coast then a short trans-Atlantic crossing is not much more remarkable than the journey you were suggesting!
“… I reckon the photo was probably taken in Georgia, US not Georgia in the Caucasus!”
That was part of the joke …
😉
What I want to know is, what was Russia doing naming one of their provinces after King George? 😉
cr
@Ken Phelps: gorgeous.
The beaver and sunrise photos are spectacular.
That fly is pretty cool looking…sorry for the invasion. Probably not as bad as the boyband, girlband invasion though. 😉
How could any creature from the realm of pure-as-the-driven-snow American Exceptionalism be an invader? (sarcasm)
The U.S. media is quick to inform one of invasive species on Amuricun soil. I’ve never seen one article on the reverse.
Just curious though, seems the insect would just as likely wreak havoc with North American walnut trees. Is it the absence of a sufficient predator?
I am working in Germany this week and on the trip by road from Berlin to the location in Brandenburg where I am staying I saw quite few Cranes that have neglected to fly further south. Beautiful birds and always exciting to see!
We’ve got those green praying mantises in New Zealand. Magnificent insects. I always rescue one if I see it in a inhospitable location.
I guess they must be invaders here (or an ‘introduced species’).
Cicadas, on the other hand, I am not fond of. Ever since a couple bit me.
cr