Category: fauna

anisota senatoria

yellowstriped oakworms in situ
University of Florida has an excellent write-up about these critters.
q palustis w/ egg cluster
They tend to lay egg masses on the lower leaves. So if you were able to inspect a few thousand leaves…
3 versions of same thing
Hoping the Charlottesville downtown mall isn’t beset by these. They particularly like q. phellos.
Differences between instars can often be seen in altered body proportions, colors, patterns, or changes in the number of body segments. —Wikipedia

Terrapene carolina carolina

eastern box turtle
Box turtles are slow crawlers, extremely long lived, slow to mature, and have relatively few offspring per year. These characteristics, along with a propensity to get hit by cars and agricultural machinery, make all box turtle species particularly susceptible to anthropogenic, or human-induced, mortality.
In the wild, box turtles are known to live over 100 years, but in captivity, often live much shorter lives.–Wikipedia

rescue

hand of God
A rare chance to be the divine agent. This fledgling faltered into an inescapable dark place. No possibility for self effected escape. Then, lo! A hand, a huge featherless being, transport, the outdoors. Another day!

urohidrosis

foot of Monticello
Like all New World vultures, the black vulture often defecates on its own legs, using the evaporation of the water in the feces and/or urine to cool itself, a process known as urohidrosis. It cools the blood vessels in the unfeathered tarsi and feet, and causes white uric acid to streak the legs.Wikipedia