Insect of the day: Painted lady butterfly (Cynthia cardui or Vanessa cardui)
Painted ladies are related to monarch butterflies and can go through several generations in a summer. Despite the name, they’re not all female. Read more …
Notes from a Lazy Urban Homesteader & Amateur Naturalist
Painted ladies are related to monarch butterflies and can go through several generations in a summer. Despite the name, they’re not all female. Read more …
Downy woodpeckers are the smallest woodpecker I see on a regular basis, just about the size of a sparrow. When it’s cloudy and gray like today, it can be a challenge to identify them. It fact, I first mistook the one I saw this afternoon for a sparrow or other little brown job, because it was sitting on a bare branch and I couldn’t make out its distinctive black-and-white pattern against the glare of the cloudy sky. Read more …
I love cedar waxwings. They seem so unobtrusive at first glance—heck, often you don’t even see them on first, or second, or even fifth glance because they camouflage themselves so well. But they’re subtly colorful, with pale yellow bellies and those bright yellow or orange tail tips, and some with those red spots like bangles on their wings. Read more …
I saw this adorable little bird a few days ago while we were on her afternoon walk. We were near the river and I noticed a small, speckled bird with a brown back and white underside on the trunk of a tree. Read more …
We’ve been seeing a lot of woodpeckers now that the leaves have fallen. A few days ago I counted close to a dozen downy woodpeckers on one of the trees near my house, and red-breasted woodpeckers have been coming around to peck at the locust tree outside my kitchen window. I’m not sure why hairy woodpeckers are called “hairy.” I guess it’s because the feathers on their bellies are fine and hair-like, but so are the feathers on the bellies of many other woodpeckers.
AppSumo is currently offering a deal for 500 GB of cloud storage for just $49—for life. Goodbye, Dropbox. Read more …
It’s that time of the year for great blue heron sightings, so if it shows up as bird of the day more than once, don’t blame me. We saw this one on the lakeshore during our afternoon walk, near sunset. Read more …
I saw a great blue heron today, which means I’ll probably start seeing sandhill cranes again soon, as well. The heron was hunting on the edge of a pond, and it found a frog … or maybe it was a piece of mulch. Read more …
Open a few cans and have a delicious corn-and-bean salad ready in less than five minutes. Wonderful on its own, served on top of cooked grains, or wrapped in a burrito. Read more …