Trophy golden shiner caught in the Tumbling Creek wetland. The angler is my daughter.
This is probably a breeding male as indicated by the reddish fins.
It was really hot and we were glad that the shaded pavilion was nearby. It was built by students and faculty to honor the memory of Ed Mayhew, a professor who worked at the college in days past.
Several clumps growing in a rich hemlock and oak-dominated forest near Dockery Lake in north Georgia. An inspirational plant that doesn't mess around with photosynthesis, preferring to get its sugar secondhand.
They get their food from tree roots, but through a mycorrhizal fungus.
Mimics a wasp in the family Pompilidae with dark, purple-iridescent wings. A gorgeous and very large rove beetle. Crazily active, crawling around and flicking its wings in a VERY waspy way.
Caught in pitfall trap near Gainesville, Hall County, GA. In mature hardwood forest, near a spring-seep wetland. These big black spiders are related to tarantulas. They are very rarely seen because they are strongly nocturnal and spend most of their time in cryptic tube-shaped webs. The web extends from a tunnel and runs up the base of a tree trunk for a few centimeters. The spiders detect prey crawling on the outside of the tube and grab the prey from INSIDE the web. They feast, and repair the damage later. Neat hunting strategy. The males wander in search of mates, and I suppose that's what this guy was doing when it blundered into our trap.
Bases of antennae are very close together, a characteristic of Gryllacrididae (camel crickets and kin). Camel crickets are usually found in crawl spaces, sheds, etc. We set out pitfall traps in hardwood forest, pine-hardwood transition forest, and even a privet-choked old home site... and captured these guys at all three spots. Yet you never see them during the day; they must hide under logs and in animal burrows.
The Cherokee name is "pot scrapings" and that is what these lichens look like during dry weather: tan on the top, black underneath, brittle, potato-chip-like things covering the rocks.
After a rain they get flexible and turn green. I suppose that the algal part of the symbiosis flourishes and does most of its photosynthesis in wet weather.
Beautiful black racer, covered in pollen like everything else in the region right now. My daughter and I found it sunning itself in the woods. It was probably a bit cool and didn't dash off immediately. Instead it reared up and vibrated its tail against the dry leaves. This display is thought to mimic a rattlesnake's rattle.
I found this beautiful treehopper colony on a white oak. They were clustered in a strikingly colored mass. This behavior probably reinforces the aposematic (warning) coloration. The adult has the "mottled" color form; most photos online show the red-striped morph.
Yellowstriped oakworm - looking sleek and aposematic on an oak leaf.
Gorgeous larva looked terrific in the low humidity, dry weather conditions. BIG HAIR!
It was hanging on its host, which I THINK was a hop-hornbeam, which if my memory is not totally screwed up, is AKA Ostrya virginiana. I'm either validating or thoroughly discrediting my college course in Woody Plants!
Cellar spider - in a bathroom.
These are big, very leggy spiders with messy webs. I understand that they like to eat other spiders, including some that might potentially be harmful to humans, so they might be considered beneficial.
I really enjoy looking at spiders but don't generally handle them much. It's hard for an entomologist to admit this, but their rapid skittery movements do give me the heebie-jeebies. Same with cockroaches.
Photography is a nice way to enjoy the Arachnids.
I left this one to its devices in near the shower in the cabin when we left. Hope it evaded the handheld vacuum I came to call Excalibur.
This is a deer fly, probably in the genus Chrysops, laying eggs on a blade of grass at the edge of a small man-made pond in North Carolina near Highlands.
The location marker is very approximate. I was on Little Scaly Mountain's north flank, at The Mountain Retreat and Learning Center's little swimming pond. If you are ever in NC you should drop by The Mountain, a very beautiful place with excellent facilities for conferences or personal retreats.
Other photos showed the rows of eggs better, but then of course the fly's head was out of focus.
It was odd to stumble upon this event, truly the most sacred milestone in a fly's life, and one that most never get old enough to experience!
It's the larva of the Yellownecked Caterpillar Moth... Order Lepidoptera, Family Notodontidae. The adult is an unspectacular brown fellow.
The larva is a spectacular generalist that can be a pretty serious defoliator in the southern Appalachians and Ozarks.
This one was on a blackgum tree, I think, but the species munches on all kinds of hardwoods.
These were gathered in conference on a dungpile (dog, I think) and erupted in a big flurry of brown when I walked by.
I think they are Wild Indigo Duskywings, an example of a species that has benefitted from the introduction of Crown Vetch, which it has adopted as a new host. The species' range has been expanding since vetch was introduced.
Pteronarcys are big, cylindrical, beastly looking stoneflies that shred leaf litter.
We caught them in large numbers using a wide fine-meshed seine (a "kick net"). They are best found by turning big flat boulders in fast current or by searching through leaf packs.
For more data and collections from Wildcat Creek and other Georgia streams visit the GSC Collection Online at http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pdUoWHW14P3vzY08I2uAsCw&hl=en
We call the stream "Wildcat Creek," but maps apparently reference it as Fall Creek. It is a clear, relatively pristine tributary to Amicalola Creek - a beautiful mountain stream.
The Google map data is incorrect: 'Wildcat Drive' is actually signed "Wildcat Campground Rd." off Steve Tate Hwy. It dead-ends at a small primitive campground SE of the observation point. A trail takes you across Amicalola Creek and then you take a right onto the green-blazed "Wildcat Trail" which parallels the stream.
