Category: insects

Readers’ wildlife photos

October 14, 2024 • 8:15 am

I’m pleased to say that Athayde Tonhasca Junior is back with a text-and-photo biologist lesson—it’s about the deleterious effects of wasps.  His text is indented, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them.

Housing disasters

On February 6, 1996, Birgenair Flight 301 took off from Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic, heading towards Frankfurt, Germany with 189 people on board. As the 757 jet began to ascend, the captain noticed that the airspeed indicator on his side of the cockpit was displaying increasingly dangerous figures. Confusion, miscommunication and bad decisions among the crew ensued, ending with loss of control of the aircraft. About 5 minutes after take-off, the plane crashed nose-down into the sea. There were no survivors. Investigators believed that the Pitot tube (the instrument that measures the speed of flowing air) on the captain’s side was blocked, resulting in conflicting voice warnings, disconnection of the autopilot, changes of thrust and pitch, and ultimately catastrophe.

A Pitot tube on the fuselage of a Boeing 787 © Olivier Cleynen, Wikimedia Commons:

That wasn’t the first major accident caused by clogged Pitot tubes. On 12 September, 1980, Florida Commuter Airlines Flight 65 crashed on the way from Palm Beach, Florida, to the Bahamas, killing all 34 people on board. Investigators could not determine the cause of the disaster, but believed one of the most likely factors was Pitot tube obstruction.

In both accidents, there were strong suspicions about the culprit: the yellow-legged mud-dauber wasp (Sceliphron caementarium). A native of North America, this wasp was introduced all over the world including in isolated places such as Hawaii, Samoa and Madeira. Like all mud-dauber wasps (families Sphecidae and Crabronidae), S. caementarium builds its nest from mud. After mating, a female will look for a muddy puddle or pond edge. She will gather a ball of mud with her mandibles and take it to an enclosed spot to lay the foundations of her nest. She will make several trips to get more mud, finish her first nest cell and start the process again. Mud-daubers are not particular about their nesting sites so long as they are dry and sheltered. Rock ledges and tree hollows would do, and so would many manmade structures such as housing eaves, windowsills, bridges, garages, open-air porches, and any hole of suitable size such as, disastrously, a Pitot tube opening.

A yellow-legged mud-dauber wasp © Muséum de Toulouse, Wikimedia Commons:

Sceliphron caementarium MHNT Profil

The aeroplanes involved in both accidents had been sitting on the tarmac for several days before their last flights, giving plenty of time for mud-daubers to find the Pitot tubes and clog them with mud. Incredibly, in the case of Flight 65, the obstruction was detected during take-off, so the plane was taken back to the hangar for engineers to fix the problem. But as crew and passengers were in a hurry to get going, the affected Pitot tube was not disconnected and cleared with compressed air as recommended. Instead, a quicker alternative involving a narrow screwdriver and a coat hanger was employed. The aeroplane took off again, and soon afterwards everybody on board was dead.

A mud-dauber wasp emerging from a Pitot tube, and a completed nest cell © U.S. Federal Aviation Administration:

The yellow-legged mud-dauber wasp didn’t go out of its way to cause aeronautical mayhem; it was only taking advantage of seemingly ideal sites to rear its young. And this wasp is good at it. Like other species in the group, it is a formidable spider hunter. The female tracks down a web-spinning spider and paralyses it with its venomous sting. She drags the comatose, helpless victim to her nest, then leaves to find another prey. In the words of Mrs Charles Meredith (Edinburgh Journal 265: 51-52, 1849), the wasp invades “the peaceful retreat of some cobwebbed recluse, which, until now, safe from house maids and brooms, has meshed and devoured his flies in comfort, but is at length seized and straightaway trussed and packed up, half alive, by the dark avenger”. After harvesting a sufficient number of spiders—up to 25—the wasp lays an egg in one of them, seals the cell and starts another one, building up to 30 cells. Inside each cell, a larva will hatch and feast on the spiders, which are all immobilised but alive and fresh. Upon consuming every spider, exoskeleton and legs included, the larva pupates and turns into an adult, who chews a hole in the muddy wall and flies away. While female wasps construct homes and hunt, males do their bit by hanging around flowers, feeding on nectar while waiting for the opportunity to meet a hard-working maiden.

a) a yellow-legged mud-dauber wasp just about to take off with a load of building material; (b) daubing the nest with mud; (c) paralysed spiders packed into a nest cell; (d) closing a cell © Park et al., 2022:

Mud-dauber wasps can be quite abundant in some places, so ecologists suspect they may be a significant mortality factor for spider populations. Pollinators seem to have no dog in this fight, but under the principle of ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’, fewer spiders could be seen as a good outcome for pollinating insects. But spiders have no preference for any insect in particular: they will take anything that comes their way. Insects that feed on plants’ vegetative parts (leaves, petals, etc.) are significantly more abundant than pollen or nectar feeders, so they are more likely to become spiders’ victims. On the other hand, spiders’ presence may discourage flower visitors. The truth is that we don’t know the workings and outcomes of wasp-spider-pollinator interactions.

A larval food cache of paralysed spiders retrieved from a mud dauber nest © IntellettoMercy, Wikipedia Commons:

In Australia, another introduced wasp is a matter of concern for air travellers: the keyhole wasp (Pachodynerus nasidens). As its common name implies, this wasp readily takes residence inside a keyhole – or any suitable space including electrical sockets, gaps in windows and abandoned nests of other wasps. House et al. (2020) suspected that machinery on airport grounds offer many hazardous nesting opportunities for the keyhole wasp such as vent lines, tail pipes, engine probes and Pitot tubes. The researchers set out replica Pitot tubes from five common aeroplane models at four locations in Brisbane Airport and monitored them for 39 months. There were 93 instances of blockage by keyhole wasps, an unacceptable figure for aviation safety standards.

 L: Panel with Pitot tube prototypes of some aircraft models. R: A female keyhole wasp inspecting a tube prototype. What could possibly go wrong? © House et al., 2020;

Australian authorities have considered trying to eliminate the keyhole wasp from Brisbane’s surroundings, the species’ current area of distribution in the country. Such an initiative is not likely to succeed. Insects are notoriously resilient against eradication attempts, and the keyhole wasp is a known tramp species (an organism inadvertently dispersed around the world by humans). It has left its native South America to invade North America and some Pacific Islands, probably as a stowaway in ships and aeroplanes. Even if Australia managed to become wasp-free, it’s not likely to remain so for too long. A costly eradication programme would be an extreme measure, considering that simpler ones are at hand: the first and obvious preventive measure is to cover Pitot tubes of aeroplanes idling for a long time at gates or in storage, as recommended by manufacturers (of course, somebody must remove the covers before a flight: forgetting to do it has caused accidents). The second measure is to check Pitot tubes when the aircraft has been stationary for extended periods, again as advised by manufacturers’ maintenance manuals.

Most insect species adapted to man-made environments carry on unnoticed by us, and some do even better there than in natural habitats. A few may occasionally damage buildings, and in some special circumstances such as mud-dauber and keyhole wasps having access to aircraft, life and property are vulnerable. These risks should not be downplayed, but it’s worth remembering we can also adapt and manage the dangers. Coexistence is rarely impossible.

The thick, spiny opisthosoma (spiders’ equivalent to an abdomen) of a spined micrathena (Micrathena gracilis) could have evolved as a defence against mud-dauber wasps. If this protection fails, the spider may end up zombified and eaten alive © Peterwchen, Wikimedia Commons:

Readers’ wildlife photos

October 7, 2024 • 8:15 am

Regular Mark Sturtevant has stepped up with another batch of arthropod photos today (it includesw one bird). Mark’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge them by clicking on the link. But please send in your photos, as we are nearly out.

Most of the subjects were photographed from area parks near where I live, which is in eastern Michigan. A couple were photographed in staged shots on the trusty dining room table.

First up is a green Assassin Bug, Zelus luridus. These are common, but this one was very moribund and had an abnormally distended abdomen. I can only assume it was either infected or parasitized.

Next are a couple beetles. I have lately become interested in Ladybird Beetles that are not the goddamn super common introduced Asian Ladybird, but other species that are harder to find. But here is a new species for me, the Fourteen-spotted Ladybird Beetle, Propylea quatuordecimpunctata (!):

Next up is a pair of Flower Longhorn Beetles, Typocerus velutinus:

I could not identify the wasp shown in the next picture, but the good folks at BugGuide surprised me by identifying it as a Sawfly, Tenthredo grandis. I did not know that these could be carnivorous, but here it is eating an insect:

A few spiders follow. Here is an unidentified Flower Crab Spider feeding on a Syrphid Fly. I don’t have the pictures that would help me to identify either the spider or the prey:

The next spider I know quite well. This is a Sixspotted Orbweaver, Araniella displicata, which is an interesting little spider that seems to always build a small orb web across the face of a curled leaf:

Another unidentified spider is shown next. This is a recently hatched Jumping Spider, and it was super tiny and very cute! I had to use the super macro lens at about 5x to get the picture:

Many Jumping Spiders live on our shed, and about once or twice a year I find one of their mortal enemies on the shed as well. This very weird insect is a Mantidfly, specifically Say’s Mantidfly, Dicromantispa sayi. Mantidflies are related to Lacewings and Antlions, and their larvae grow as parasites within the egg sacs of spiders. This particular species is known to go after the egg sacs of Jumping Spiders, hence they can turn up on the shed, but they will also make use of other spider hosts as well. Mantidflies are very odd-looking, and their convergent evolution on Praying Mantids is obvious:

And finally, here is a rare-for-me vertebrate. I was visiting a new park, and this impressive Sandhill Crane (Grus canadensis) was clearly expecting that I would feed it:

Readers’ wildlife photos

October 2, 2024 • 8:15 am

Reader Chris Taylor continue his voyage to Queensland with Part 3 of his narrative (see links to other parts here).  Chris’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them:

In this part I will show some more of the Yourka landscape and then give some insight into the work involved in restoring the landscape.

Downstream from the accommodation, Sunday Creek is crossed by the Glen Ruth Road. Just by the crossing there is a series of small pools where the water runs beneath a shady canopy of Paperbarks, Melaleuca quinquinervia:

and gum trees, probably Eucalyptus tereticornis:

It was a nice and cool place to sit, next to the creek in these areas.

There were more dragonflies here. This is a Scarlet Percher, Diplacodes haematodes. These are common throughout Australia. Fairly small in size (wingspan about 60mm), they make up for it with their brilliant red coloration:

This one even let me take a portrait too!

Driving back to the accommodation at Sunday Camp, we came across this Agile Wallaby Notamacropus agilis, a species that is found across the northernmost parts of Australia, and into southern New Guinea. This is a robust male, probably 80cm tall, with a tail about the same length.  The females of this species are rather smaller. These are quite common across the reserve:

Next to the road was this tall Lemon Scented Gum, Corymbia citriodora, shining in the late afternoon light as the moon rises behind it. This is an area where the Heathy Woodlands are coming back nicely with plenty of recruitment of young plants:

Returning the reserve to something like its former state is not as easy as just letting nature take its own course. There is a lot of time and effort invested in the process. Bush Heritage Australia have a program where volunteers can apply to do some of this work. There are fences to be removed to allow for free passage of the native animals, there are introduced weeds to be eradicated, and exotic animals to be controlled, and on these some reserves fire management to be considered.

Yourka used to be a cattle station. Bush Heritage no longer have cattle on the property, but Yourka being surrounded by other cattle farms, incursions are common. We came across a small mob of these as we drove out to work near the Herbert River. These are probably the Droughtmaster breed:

The Herbert River forms part of the western boundary of Yourka:

Here it runs between steep banks as much as 8m high:

We were there in the dry season. In the wet season, the river will often run bank high – or even spread out onto the flood plain. In December 2023, this region was affected by Tropical Cyclone Jasper. The storm stalled as it came onto the coast, inundating the area from Cooktown in the north to Innisfail in the south as well as parts of the interior. The city of Cairns received 2200mm of rain in 4 days. Yourka would have had much less, but even so the Herbert breached its banks. We found flood damage and debris at least 12m above the creek beds.

Flooding causes a lot of damage, as the volume of water and the vegetation it carries will lay flat -or carry away – any fence. To mitigate this problem some of the creeks are fitted with Flood Fencing.

These are made from sheets of corrugated iron suspended from a wire rope. In the dry season these will stop most cattle from wandering on to the reserve, while allowing other native animals to pass beneath. In the wet season, the pressure of the water flow will just push the panels up and allow the debris to pass without sustaining too much damage.

But in exceptional flows even these fences are just ripped out and tangled and the metal sheets torn and destroyed.

We came to the reserve to work, and one of our jobs turned out to be repairing some of the flood fencing! We are putting the final touches to a fence that crosses Sunday Creek for about 70m and up the banks that are 11m high.

While collecting the materials for the fencing from the stockpile, there is a technique to lifting the metal sheets; I always lift from the far side, so that the metal remains between me and anything that has been hiding underneath.

Sure enough, one of the times that I lifted a metal sheet, beneath it was a snake. In this case it was nonvenomous, but it did reinforce the need to do the right thing – especially when on such a remote reserve!

Spotted Python, Antaresia maculosa. This is quite a small snake, less than 1m long, but this species does not grow much bigger.

Readers’ wildlife photos

September 28, 2024 • 8:15 am

Today we have part 2 of Chris Taylor’s journey to Queensland (part 1 is here). His captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

In this part I will show some of the wild life around the reserve at Yourka.

Yourka is a Bush Heritage Australia reserve in the Einasleigh Uplands bioregion in Far North Queensland, not far from Cairns. Its 43,500 Ha covers the region from the Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage Site in the east down to the Herbert River valley in the west, and protects a range of habitats. There are a number of endangered species on the reserve, including a population of Mareeba Rock Wallaby.

We took the bus up to Atherton, where we were met by reserve staff who drove us the rest of the way to the reserve, where we arrived in the lovely tropical twilight:

There had been a quite intense and long-lasting Wet Season this year, and so the billabong on Sunday Creek, just 100m from the accommodation, had plenty of water in it.

I went for a walk around the billabong. With plenty of water, there were also plenty of birds

A Great Egret, White-faced Heron, Egretta novaehollandiae, and a Royal Spoonbill, Platalea regia, hunted in the water among the waterlilies:

Further around was a White Ibis, Threskiornis molucca, next to another Heron:

A Great Egret, Ardea alba, was feeding amongst the waterlilies in the shallows. This is quite a big bird, standing up to 1m tall:

One of the Royal Spoonbills took off and landed in a Eucalypt tree:

I tried to get a photo of the bird’s remarkable beak. The bird stirs up the bottom of the pond and then swings the broad end of the bill through the water, detecting any arthropod or fish prey which it will then capture and swallow:

A Forest Kingfisher, Todiramphus macleayii, was diving from a tree branch to take small fish from the water. This photo was taken at Innisfail, not at Yourka, but I just wanted to show the glossy blue plumage of this bird!:

There was plenty to see around the Blue Waterlilies Nymphaea gigantea:

Many dragonflies were active.  This is an unidentified species, probably a female:

This is the male of the Blue Skimmer, Orthetrum caledonicum:

Readers’ wildlife photos

September 11, 2024 • 8:15 am

And we’re back, with a batch of insect and spider photos from regular Mark Sturtevant. Mark’s comments are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Here are more pictures of arthropods that were taken last summer from eastern Michigan, which is where I live. They include both pictures from the field along with staged shots from the ‘ol dining room table.

First up are two bee- or wasp-mimicking Syrphid flies. The first one is Somula decora and the second is Temnostoma alternans. An issue that Syrphid flies will have when mimicking Hymenopterans is that because they are descended from flies with shortened antennae, they lack the long antennae of their models. The first one tries to fix that with antennae that are placed out on a stalk on the head.

The second one (which is doing a great job looking like a Yellowjacket, btw), instead tends to wave its darked front legs up and down as wasps will do with their antennae. The provided link is worth viewing, as it shows one of these flies using its legs. It really sells it! We often see that mimics not only take on the appearance of their models, but they will also imitate some of their identifying behaviors as well.

Next up is a simple Asian Lady Beetle larva Harmonia axyridis. This predatory larva will graze on aphids and then pupate to later become the ubiquitous Lady Beetle that everyone sees everywhere. In case anyone is wondering, the terms Lady Beetle, Ladybird Beetle, and Ladybug (one word) are all widely used, but it is technically more correct to use a reference that they are beetles (Coleoptera), and not bugs (Hemiptera). I will try to remember that.

It has been many years since I’ve seen the beetle shown in the next picture. This is an Elm Borer, Saperda tridentata. The common name of course tells you something about the biology of this insect.

Let’s wrap up this set with some Jumping Spiders, which belong to the family Salticidae (referring to their habit of jumping, or saltating). I am lucky in that many species from this charming family are commonly seen in and around the house. There quite a few more besides the three shown here.

First up is a male Tan or Familiar Jumping Spider, Platycryptus undatus. These are our largest Salticid, and I can always find a few out on the shed. They are distinctly flatter than many members of this family, and they use that to quickly hide inside crevices on the shed. One has to be fast when trying to catch them.

Next is a female Dimorphic jumping spider, Maevia inclemens. They have this name since males come in two color morphs that look completely different. I showed one here a couple posts back. Jumping spiders are usually fidgety to photograph, but a common trick is to calm them down with a little snack.

Last, here is a female Zebra Jumping Spider, Salticus scenicus. These are one of our smallest Salticids. Males sport very large chelicerae and fangs, and I have not managed to get WEIT-worthy pictures of one since (for me) they are always dialed up to eleven. Save it for next season, I always say. Anyway, the last Zebra picture shows a new post-processing trick where I add Dramatic Lighting by using layer masks to apply darkened gradients above and below. This is to add greater depth to the surroundings and to emphasize the subject.

Manyleti: days 4-5

August 19, 2024 • 9:30 am

Wildlife sightings were a bit slim in the bush this morning, but yesterday we had two great highlights: one was an invasion of our swimming pool area by a large breeding herd of nearly two dozen elephants, parched in the heat and eager to drink the water (which is unchlorinated and runs continuously over the pool’s far edge, where excess water fills a smaller pool from which the pachyderms drink). For that we didn’t have to leave the lodge.

The second was our third sighting of a leopard, as well as a new cat for me: the cheetah. We saw both cats within just an hour of setting off on our three-hour afternoon drive. All of these are documented below.

Before lunch every day, they set the tables and put out a plate of bread and rolls. I swear to Ceiling Cat that  the the vervet monkeys know when lunchtime is, and are aware of the tempting breadstuffs. This onr, whom I photographed before his Big Theft, ran into the dining room, and before anyone could stop her (I don’t know the sex, but without balls it seems to be a female), grabbed two pieces of bread, stuffing one in her mouth and holding the other in her hand. She then hied off and ran up a tree while the leader of a group of young Italian visitors, about to sit down at the table, yelled at the vervet. The leader then returned the plate to the kitchen, asking for a replacement (I wouldn’t have asked). The lucky primate then sat in the tree, stuffing herself with carbs.

After lunch the elephants began show up at the pool to drink, for the day was hot.The big one to the right is, I’m told, probably the matriarch of a breeding group that appears to be largely female (yes, elephants have, like all animals, only two sexes).

This gave one Italian visitor the chance to importune her boyfriend for the selfie of a lifetime:

The elephants started showing up individually or in small groups, so that eventually there were 21 of them, all vying to drink! They were of all sizes and ages, but so far as I can tell nearly all were female. Rosemary will, I think, do her best to verify or disconfirm this in the comments.

You can see the small runoff pool where most of the elephants drink, while the bigger one can reach their trunks into the larger and cleaner pool to the left (the regular swimming pool). It’s wonderful that the designers of this lodge provided for the elephants in this way:

All sizes were there; check out the little one under the matriarch. Its trunk could barely reach even the smaller pool.

Adult and infants get a drink of cool water:

What a sight! One of the employees told me that when it’s hot they often get this many elephants. The new human visitors to the lodge were stupefied at the sight.

As it was hot, some of them used the water to spray their backs, like this one. Many also fanned their blood-rich ears to cool off. And they clearly enjoyed playing in the water. One of them even blew bubbles into the small pool.

Within the first two hours of the afternoon drive yesterday, we saw two rare species of cat. The first was the same leopard we saw yesterday, now resting on the ground and apparently unperturbed by our vehicle:

Soon thereafter, our vehicle, which held eight plus local driver/guide Dan (two Italians, a family of four Frenchmen, and two Americans, including me and an astronomer from Baltimore), came upon a great species The French paterfamilias was good at spotting animals, and cried out late in the afternoon. He had seen something in the distance lying atop a large, defunct termite mound.

This is what it was:

Yep, a hard-to-find cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus), the world’s fastest land animal. How fast is it? As you can imagine, its flat-out speed is hard to measure, but it’s about a mile a minute, attaining this speed from a standstill in just a few seconds. Wikipedia says this (bolding is mine):

The cheetah is the world’s fastest land animal. Estimates of the maximum speed attained range from 80 to 128 km/h (50 to 80 mph).  A commonly quoted value is 112 km/h (70 mph), recorded in 1957, but this measurement is disputed.  In 2012, an 11-year-old cheetah from the Cincinnati Zoo set a world record by running 100 m (330 ft) in 5.95 seconds over a set run, recording a maximum speed of 98 km/h (61 mph).

Cheetahs equipped with GPS collars hunted at speeds during most of the chase much lower than the highest recorded speed; their run was interspersed with a few short bursts of a few seconds when they attained peak speeds. The average speed recorded during the high speed phase was 53.64 km/h (33.3 mph), or within the range 41.4–65.88 km/h (25.7–40.9 mph) including error. The highest recorded value was 93.24 km/h (57.9 mph)

. . . Cheetahs have subsequently been measured at running at a speed of 64 mph (103 km/h) as an average of three runs including in opposite direction, for a single individual, over a marked 200 m (220 yd) course, even starting the run 18 m (59 ft) behind the start line, starting the run already running on the course. Again dividing the distance by time, but this time to determine the maximum sustained speed, completing the runs in an average time of 7 seconds. Being a more accurate method of measurement, this test was made in 1965 but published in 1997. Subsequently, with GPS-IMU collars, running speed was measured for wild cheetahs during hunts with turns and maneuvers, and the maximum speed recorded was 58 mph (93 km/h) sustained for 1–2 seconds. The speed was obtained by dividing the length by the time between footfalls of a stride. Cheetahs can go from 0 to 97 km/h (0 to 60 mph) in less than 3 seconds.

I think the one we saw (below) is a female though I couldn’t see teats. But testes should be visible if it were a male. It is slim and graceful, much thinner than the leopard shown above. Its figure shows the need for speed:

More from Wikipedia:

The cheetah lives in three main social groups: females and their cubs, male “coalitions”, and solitary males. While females lead a nomadic life searching for prey in large home ranges, males are more sedentary and instead establish much smaller territories in areas with plentiful prey and access to females. The cheetah is active during the day, with peaks during dawn and dusk. It feeds on small- to medium-sized prey, mostly weighing under 40 kg (88 lb), and prefers medium-sized ungulates such as impala, springbok and Thomson’s gazelles. The cheetah typically stalks its prey within 60–100 m (200–330 ft) before charging towards it, trips it during the chase and bites its throat to suffocate it to death.

What a lovely cat!

Now birds. Rita and Martim, as well as Dan, identify the large woven nests below as the product of the red-billed buffalo weaver (Bubalornis niger), a denizen of dry savanna. Here are three colonial nests in one tree, a tree with bark partly removed by elephant scratching (reddish area near the ground).

Wikipedia describes the nests:

Red-billed buffalo weavers breed in colonies. The nests are composed of an enormous mass of thorny twigs. These twigs are divided into separate lodges (compartments), each with multiple egg chambers. Each chamber has a smaller nest, typically built by the female (unless they are part of a cooperative breeding colony). The smaller nest is composed of grass, leaves, and roots. The whole nest is usually found in a thorny tree or in a windmill near areas inhabited by humans.

Two ways of looking at zebras:

To our best knowledge, as I’ve reported several times, the stripes evolved mainly as a deterrent to biting flies, which simply don’t like landing on striped substrates. They don’t seem to be any kind of camouflage or a deterrent to predation by carnivores.

. . . and a blue wildebeest:

Now from this morning.  These holes appeared overnight in the packed-earth parking lot, and we were told they were made by termites. I’m not sure what’s going on here, but I have inquired of an entomologist:

It was chilly and partly cloudy this morning, and this is an unmanipulated shot of the bush, which really is a black-and-white view at sunrise:

Pickings were slim on this morning’s drive (this is why you must stay at a place like this for, I think, at least four days).  Dan livened things up by propping up the skull of a dead hippo (I showed the skeleton before). He said this hippo had been badly mauled in a battle with another hippo, and died from bleeding out:

We had a rare “sunupper” today (the coffee we get near the end of a morning’s drive): we got to get out of the car and drink our java right near wildlife: a trio of giraffe. They were quite curious about us and looked at our group of nine intently for a long time:

Now that is what I call a coffee break!

Nearby, concentric species of dung: the darker and smaller droppings from a zebra surrounded the larger brownish ones from an elephant:

Every day we see one ostrich, and it’s always crossing the road. One might think it was confecting a joke:

Finally, Dan spotted rhino tracks (see below) and spent a long time trying to find rhinos for us. I’d already seen one, but as the longest resident of the lodge now—I’ve been here four days—none of the others had. Dan always tries hard to find hard-to-see species, but despite his getting out of the car and combing the bush, we found nada except for these prints:

But I have two more 3-hour drives (the animals I have yet to see include the Cape buffalo—my last of the Big Five—a hippo out of water, and the lilac-breasted roller (Coracias caudatus), one of the world’s most beautiful birds. I’ve actually seen the species twice, but they always fly away before I can take a photo. Here’s a shot taken from Wikipedia, as I doubt I’ll be able to photograph one properly: they’re not uncommon, but are also skittish:

The caption says that this one was photographed at Kruger National Park, which is right next door.

Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Readers’ wildlife photos

August 1, 2024 • 8:15 am

Today we have a collection of photos from several readers. All of their captions and IDs are indented, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them.

First, three from Martin Riddle:

I take lots of nature photos around the campus of Brooksby Village, a retirement community in Peabody,Ma.

Ruby-Throated Hummingbird  (Archilochus colubris):

Hummingbird hawk-moth (Macroglossum stellatarum). [JAC: this is a great example of convergent evolution when taken together with hummingbirds]

American Painted Lady butterfly (Vanessa virginiensis):

From Norm Gilinsky:

This is perhaps more of a conversation starter than an actual wildlife photo, but we found this seemingly unique sunflower in a field of sunflowers. This one is from a farm in Woodinville, Washington. It’s a cultivar of the Common Sunflower (Helianthus annuus).

What’s up with that? It’s a well-formed flower within the main flower. Since sunflowers are in the Asteraceae (Formerly the Compositae), it’s a composite within a composite. Strange and interesting:

From Simon Badderley:

Lin was walking down Democracy Street in our village when she saw this on the step of a derelict house in the middle of Ano Korakiana, Corfu.It’s a Giant Peacock Moth (Saturnia pyri), the largest moth in Europe, having a wingspan close to five and a half inches (140mm). It’s often thought to be a bat when flying at night. This is the female without the male’s feather-like antennae. The adult moth does not feed, but the caterpillar feeds on various deciduous trees including fruit trees and is regarded as a nuisance by fruit tree owners. These moths are active from March to late June. This one was almost inert, willing to be touched.

From Bryan Lepore:

 A photo of a green burgundy stink bug.  Wikipedia says it’s “Banasa dimidiata, the green burgundy stink bug, is a species of stink bug in the family Pentatomidae.”  Photo details: Taken in mid-Massachusetts: Middlesex county, July, 2024 – i.e. just a couple weeks ago. Mid-day, sunny, dry… on the recycle bin lid. iPhone 13 mini; enhanced photo:

And a lovely mountain from Larry Zelenak:

Not a wildlife photo, but maybe you can use it anyway, perhaps in a new series of best views from commercial plane flights.  This is Mt. Rainier on the morning of July 9 from an Alaska Airlines flight from SEA to RDU, taken with an older iPhone.