What's this Bug?

 

Actually I believe that these are flies, not bugs, but I would love to know what they are beyond that generality.

We found them a couple of days ago near the Sara Lib Road quarry.

Also, here are some dragonflies that need monikers. 

Thanks in advance! (If they were birds I would either know, or know where and how to look...insects, not so much)

And while we are at it, I forgot the name of this millipede. I don't think it's Milly, but it might be.

Just add Black Flies

The size of this guy

And you can be outdoors in the Adirondack foothills.....

Year of the Dragon

I love the clicking clatter of their wings

Flies that is. We have never in our lives seen so many. There are thousands upon thousands of them, up in the fields, over by the barn, and here by the house.

A look up though the binoculars at a soaring Red-tailed Hawk reveals a dozen, laddered up to the sky between lens and bird. They can't be seen by the unaided eye, but they are there, hunting, always hunting. They fly in storied ranks before the sitting porch, bent on buggy dining.

Every single field is patrolled by a net of them, a deadly web of voracious appetites, devouring insects in untold numbers. 

I sat on a bale, watching the boss make hay the other day and saw them, jinking and jiving, grabbing beetles and skeeters and who knows what else. You could actually watch them swerve for an insect and then resume course.

Most of them are huge, front-end-heavy green things that never land long enough for me to even get a good look, let alone a photo. One flew right past my face revealing glowing golden eyes like some metallic monster machine. There are a handful of the ones photographed, but mostly the big greens. Do they hatch in the river I wonder....I have never seen anything like them.

***Update: I think the big greens are female and young Eastern Pondhawks (what a great name!) The males are blue and I have seen a few blue ones. How cool is that?

Fluttery Friday

The things you see on farm walks......

In the barn til well after nine last night. Sent Liz home early to get some rest. The rest of us chopped hay or fed hay or milked cows or delivered Broadway's great big bull calf, depending on our various abilities. 

Sorry about quality, taken with phone almost at dark

Can't tell you how amazing I find those milking shorthorns. Huge calf, hard birth because of it. Lungs full of fluid when born. We laid him head down on the edge of the hay pack for a few minutes and cleaned his nose and mouth with paper towels and hay, while mama licked his fanny and mooed sweet nothings at him.

Literally ten minutes later he was standing, and by the time the men had the wagon filled for the other cows he was following her around. This amazing hardiness is probably why our herd is slowly, but surely, turning red. Have a good one.

Box Elder Bugs

If birds actually liked to eat them, they would have an incredible buffet, that they would write home to their mothers about. Alas they don't.

Meanwhile, although we see plenty of them every year, I have never seen anything like the masses we spotted Saturday while out fencing. For some reason they mostly seemed to be lying around in clumps on the ground or festooned over the branches of some dead box elders the boss cut down last year.

The pdf on controlling them says you can drown them with a garden  hose if they annoy you. Lucky for this congregation they are way up in the field.....

Buggy

 These are for Cathy who mentioned an interest in them. This big ol' thumbnail-sized spidey is hanging around on the clothesline, hiding on a clothes pin. He, well, prolly really a she, is absurdly tame, but magnificently ugly. Right click if you really want to get personal.

And this is a box elder bug nymph we saw when fencing the other day. Not much to look at but better than a spider at least.

Puddle Wonderful

Actually I don't think puddles are all that wonderful these days, as in, if I don't see another one this fall it will be soon enough. But aren't these puddling butterflies wonderful? I love their pink legs and little green tennis ball eyes.