Part of what I love about taking pictures is the way the camera serves as a visual note-taking device for me. The photos remind me, "share this" or "find out what this thing is." Photos serve as a recorder of my history, a way to connect with others and share special moments or things I found interesting or humorous, and above all, a way to learn and to pass on learning.
During yesterday's pooptastic forest walk, I came across not only five billion geometer caterpillars, but also a couple of other things that were new to me and interesting. I documented them not only because they appealed to me, but also so that I had a record of what they looked like so that I could try to identify them later, when back at home with my computer. It's much easier to google a strange bug or plant when you have an accurate image of it, in addition to the memory of your observations.
The first was this caterpillar, which was the only non-geometer larva I observed all day. It was quite distinct from the inchworms all around, with its protruding horns, rough body, and mottled coloration.
The spiky horns said "don't touch me," although I don't really know whether or not I would have been stung if I had tried. Stinging caterpillars hurt a lot, so I didn't test my hypothesis.
When disturbed, it arched its back and lowered the horns. From the front, two dark markings and the extended horns looked like the eyes and front legs of a waiting spider. I wonder if these structures have evolved to scare off predators?
My first attempt at identifying this interesting critter led me to believe it was Limenitis archippus, the Viceroy butterfly. But then, by chance, I read a What's That Bug? post that indicated that Viceroy larvae and Red-Spotted Purple (Limenitis arthemis) larvae are often confused for each other. This led me to pore over images of both species. They're very similar, but it seems to me that Red-Spotted Purples have fewer spikes on their backs (an observation corroborated by this page). I also think the tree I found it on was a birch, which is consistent with L. arthemis.
Without photo notes, I would not have been able to make the distinction between spiky and not-quite-as-spiky. It's interesting to me that both of these species are mimics of poisonous swallowtail species in their adult form. I'll have to be on the lookout for adult Red-Spotted Purples (and the Pipevine Swallowtails they imitate) this summer.
My other discovery initially seemed vegetable, but turned out to be something quite different. At first glance, this pretty white and fuschia puffball looked like a flower.
If you know your trees, though, you have probably noticed the leaves at the edges of that photo. This is a white oak sapling...and oak trees don't have flowers like that. I was curious - what was this thing? I determined that while it looked fluffy, it was firm and attached to the fork in the branch. Could it be some kind of fungus? A really bizarre moss?
Googling this one was tricky. "White pink fungus ball" yielded little to nothing and I really couldn't think of many other ways to describe whatever it was. Finally I did a google image search on a string that went something like "white pink fuzzy ball thing on tree" and amid photos of Christmas ornaments, cherry blossoms, wedding cakes, and goodness only knows what else, I suddenly spotted IT. The thing. Just one, but that was all it took. I followed it to a flickr thread in which people asked other people to identify trees and things related to trees. Nobody had identified it, so I followed the photo to the user's flickr photostream, where the photo itself had been tagged by a viewer! Woohoo!
The viewer had identified it as a wool-sower gall, and when I searched for those terms, halleluiah, there were a jillion things that looked like my thing. Because my photo showed that the tree was an oak (a detail that I had forgotten), and oaks are the preferred host plant for this type of gall, I felt certain that I had correctly identified the mystery growth.
The gall is a mass created by larvae of a type of Cynipid wasp, Callirhytis seminator. I tend to think of galls as plain brown or grey masses with a smooth or slightly bumpy surface, rather than flowery like this one. The grubs inside the gall secrete a substance that creates the outer appearance. I wonder how that works, exactly? What makes it feathery? What are the pink bits?
This type of discovery is the sort of learning process that excites me and feeds my spirit. I couldn't do it without my trusty photographic note-taking device!
How do you use photos? What discoveries have you made lately?
