Double-click on any image to view it full size.  Click the back-button to return to your place on this page.

 

Greetings from Topsail Island!

Knowing that we would be here this week, and that I might not find anything to build an essay around, I prepared something before we left home.

The phrase “Hat Trick” seems to be less well known in this country than in England, possibly because it originated from the quintessentially English sports of cricket and football (sometimes known in the colonies as soccer), where it was used to describe a single player taking three wickets or scoring three goals in a single game.  However, it is also now used in ice-hockey, and at least in England it is used to denote three of almost anything.

I have not deserted nature photography for sports photography, but a hat plays a key role in this set of pictures.

About ten days ago, I was just setting out for my daily nature walk when I spotted a beautiful Imperial Moth (picture #1)

clinging to the concrete wall of our building.  (You may remember that just a few weeks ago I included a picture of another Imperial Moth on the wall of our favorite bagel bakery!)  This did not seem like a very good place for it so I decided to move it to a more sheltered location.  Rather than simply poking it till it flew away, the only implement I had to hand was the hat I always wear on my walks, so, I gently persuaded the moth into the hat!  (Picture #2)

 These moths are so spectacular that it I find it hard to get my head around the fact that they exist purely to find a mate.  They are so dedicated to that goal that they do not even feed as adults – like several other species of moths they have only vestigial mouth parts.  Consequently they only live for a few days.  Assuming their mission was successful, the eggs they lay before dying will hatch in about 10 days.  The caterpillars (which I have not yet seen) feed relentlessly for about six weeks before they bury themselves in the ground and pupate.  That will happen about eight to ten weeks after their parents emerged from their own pupae.  Of course, the pupae cannot move or feed, but simply spend the rest of the year – nine or ten months – gradually metamorphosing into the next generation of moths which will emerge next summer!  Someone famous once said that a butterfly is just nature’s way of making another caterpillar, so I suppose this gorgeous moth is just nature’s way of making another pupa!

About three days before that, again on my daily walk, I encountered a juvenile Five-lined Skink acting rather strangely.  It was trying to cross a grassy area, but was having great difficulty avoiding becoming entangled in the green plastic mesh which had been put down by our landscapers in order to stabilize the new grass.  (Picture #3)

While I understand the need to prevent the grass from eroding, I wish there was a way of doing so without using this mesh.  Already this season I have found three (harmless) snakes that had become entangled, and had died from suffocation, hunger, thirst, or shock, in this exact same area.  In previous years I have found other snakes that had died in similar circumstances, and although I am not exactly a snake devotee, it saddens me to see harmless creatures die this way.  Anyway, hoping to save this skink, the hat came into play!  (Picture #4 – which also illustrates how small this skink was.)

So that makes two events involving the hat, but to be a hat trick I need three!  In fact, I am offering four, although the next two were not as deliberate as the others.  Picture #5 shows a female Golden-rod Crab spider that happened to find her way onto the hat while I was wearing it.

I like spiders even less than snakes, so I removed it rather quickly, but did take the picture before shooing the spider away.  These spiders usually lurk in yellow or white flowers, and can, over time, change their color from white to yellow and back.  They subdue their prey with a venom, but it is too weak to be harmful to humans.  Finally, picture #6 shows a Mourning Cloak butterfly that landed on my hat after a gust of wind had blown it off!

Have a great week!