A tiny moth, a 3mm long silvery white angel, lays its eggs on the underside of a leaf of a magnolia or tuliptree. A miniscule colorless caterpillar hatches and penetrates the bottom epidermis of the leaf, and begins eating. The caterpillar eats a trail through the chlorophyll-rich cells of the leaf, leaving a pale track behind. As the caterpillar ( Read more... )

Those who have been on nature walks with me lately may have seen me more frequently photographing apparently bare leaves. In fact I'm documenting the weird lines and glyphs etched in the leaves, evidence of a particular type of feeding behavior. These are leaf mines, sandwiched between the top and bottom layer of a leaf. An insect egg was deposited ( Read more... )

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Buying a new lichen field guide and then going out to try to identify as many as possible was amazingly humbling. I'm gonna need someone to hold my hand through this process, because it's more difficult than I thought. If you are good at this, I need your help--it might be good to know these are all on Great Blue Hill, on a wet day. Ready? Here ( Read more... )

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