Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Nature Notes - This and That

I prepared this post so as to participate in Nature Notes over at RamblingWoods.com. Click on the link and take a look!

I found some interesting things around the neighborhood this week. First of all, when I walked down the hill into the little village of Loveland, Ohio, I passed a tree that I always pass, but I stopped and looked at it because it seems to be bearing...blueberries! Take a look!


The thing that seems strange is the tree, itself. We had blueberries when I was a kid and they were on low bushes - not trees. I looked on the internet and there ARE pictures of blueberries on trees with leaves like these...





The next item on my hit parade is shown below. Sorry the photo is a tad out of focus, but I spotted it up high, behind branches, AND in someone else's yard(!) So, this photo was the best I can do. It is a cocoon made of pine needles! I googled around and it is the cocoon of the bag worm. They use the material of whatever plant they are on to make a cocoon. I discovered this on the website whatsthatbug.com.

Even though we are supposed to show you things in OUR area, I cannot resist showing you an Israeli bag worm cocoon photo from whatsthatbug.com. As I said, the bag worm makes a cocoon from whatever is handy, so the bag worm cocoon in the photo from Israel is made of sticks! The first photo below is my pine needle cocoon, and the second is the Israeli one of the same insect.