An-t-agram #8

'Mad today when confronted by rain I waited, helpless, in a taxi'

After the rain in Dublin.
Wish we were there... I've a hankering after some Leo Burdocks One Hundred years old this year no less!

Or perhaps some gruel?

This one snapped  when Mrs B and I were last there and posted 'live' to Mr Key, gruel enthusiast extraordinaire at Hooting Yard

An-t-agrams in case you forgot....

Now We Are Two

Yes Banished's Bugs is two years old today.

Yay!

And I imagine you'll be relieved that in celebration there is no An-t-agram today.

Yay!

We survived 2 months at the height of bug season last year without the ability to post a picture (thanks Microsoft Update) but recovered through  the fall and winter.

Traffic isn't exactly what you'd call rush-hour everyday but its steady and steadily increasing.

You almost had a shot of a Gray Fox eating something in my backyard this morning, but the sun was just coming up and light was that little bit too low yet. I might see if I can do anything with what I did get and maybe post later. In the words of Phillip K Dick in Through A Glass Darkly 'Let's hear it for the vague blur!' 

But a song to celebrate the 2nd B'Day comes from a suggestion by Outa-Spaceman at the time of the 1st Birthday. Its his Birthday favourite.

An-t-agram #7

"Larry, a twisted biochemist, planned to fix a new head on Andy."

I had to kick the Larry and Andy from the search term or its merely a list of Larrys and Andys. But that done the random mass of clotted nonesense once more astonished me with its apparent irrelevance.

Now obviously biocheomistry is very pretty

And Stuart Gordon's Reanimator (1985) does involve much afixxing of new heads

But lobsters? As much as I love lobster.... LOBSTERS??

Just A Frog And Some Eggs

Just a Northern Green Frog Lithobates clamitans melanota on the door step over the weekend. Hunting little slugs in the rain, help yourself buddy. Dig in!

And while we haven't seen a Black Swallowtail yet this year they have seen us. Specifically they have seen our herb seedlings on the back deck and made use of them. There are only about a dozen eggs from this early brood and the fennel, dill and parsley are all growing quickly enough that they ought to get through that initial ravening caterpillar horde hatching any day now.    

An-t-agram #6

"When prodded Leo B. Nixon always emits an icy fart and I hate it."

Well I didn't say they were all deep or elegant.

And on the subject of those things neither deep nor elegant this Google search produced images of

 Diego Maradona

and Oor Georgie

An-t-agram #5

'I Wim, a bandit, wandered hopelessly, adrift in that onyx ocean.'

Which would bring to mind Wim Wenders. Or if you want to be circular about this then Wim was a choice made all those years ago in the anagram because of Wim Wenders.

And Wim Wenders will always bring to mind this

Bigger Beasts

Mrs B and I took a Sunday trip out to Norfolk Botanical Gardens on Sunday without Banished Jr., who went to the beach with his big sister.

 

It turned out not to be a big day for butterflies ( a few Eastern Tailed Blues and distant Sleepy Oranges) or dragonflies. But there were other bigger beasts out and about. Mrs B. spotted the Black Snake (Pantherophis obsoletus) slithering in and around the little Monkey Shrine. Only a baby yet it was around 2 feet long but no thicker than my finger.

 

 

 

 

Moving on we crossed the canal on a bridge we shared with a Five Lined Skink (Eumeces inexpectatus)

 

 

Alas not a juvenile so there was no bright blue tail but a red-brown head and about 4 inches from the head to the tip of the tail.

 

Snapping plants and flowers as we wandered a shadow passed overhead and we saw a large bird come to rest in the tree above us. Now I was out for plants and bugs originally so I took the macro and super macro lenses and didnt drag the long lens along. I always end up regretting not taking it and it was true again Sunday as I could have used it for the juvenile Red Tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) sitting happily in the pine above our heads As it was I had to make do with what I had on hand... and a good deal of later cropping. 

 

 

And the flight pics when he decided to head out the tree and across to the lakeside werent what I'd have wished for but at least he did turn up within the frame

 

 

 

 

 

 

First Odonata And Ones A New One!

Its nice this weekend, 70 degrees or so and a nice breeze. And finally there are damselflies and dragonflies. The first damsel as usual is the Fragile Forktail (Ischnura posita) with its distinctive exclamation point ! shoulder stripes.

 

 

I wandered around some with my eye out for dragonflies too but didnt spot anything all day. And then late this afternoon I was in the kitchen  and looked out of the window and there was a familiar silhouette on the screen. But going outside it didnt turn out to be a familiar dragonfly. In fact it was entirely unfamilar and after perching on a planter to get the shot I had to post images at BugGuide to get an ID.

 

Not actually the very best of shots either with sun relected back off the glass and through the sceen, but good enought to get the ID.

 

 

 

Its a  Harlequin Darner (Gomphaeschna furcillata ) one of the  Gomphaeschna or Pygmy Darners. Its found up and down the East coast from Maine down to Florida. But its a first for my yard and thats always pleasing. Two new confirmed species last year, the Common and Prince Baskettails and now another to start 2013. Next target this year has to be to get more and better Saddlebags and Prince Baskettails.

An-t-agram #4

'Dire children oft anointed bald pates with waxy mayonnaise'

A bald or tonsured pate yes.

But as fine and goofy a movie as it is the relevance of The Wicker Man as derived from the search term utterly defeats me

An-t-agram #3

Next day I, Diana, wrote little symphonies, each for a wind band.

Confused? See here

Spooooookkkkyyyyyyy!

I was driving to work this morning with the iPod on shuffle as ever when my phone rang. Now normally I dont answer if I'm driving but the traffic was light so I was bad.

It was Mrs. B wanting to be the first to tell me that Maggie Thatcher was dead. And there in the background as she told me was Morrisey with Margaret On The Guillotine.

Hows that for timing?

As for Maggie what's to say? As old and reactionary as I get some people just aren't likeable.

As Uncle Bill Burroughs wrote, "As a wise old black faggot once said to me 'some people are shits darling' "

An-t-agram #2

"An orthodox priest waylaid by a thin mendicant weasel fiend."

Weirdly this didn't produce a single image of a weasel when used as a Google search term.

It did produce this single image of Old Sam

Fair enough.
He was, lets face it, thin and always looked like he should have been a priest. I'm unaware though of any medicant or weasely tendencies. He is the only Nobel laureat for literature to appear in Wisden

 

And then this from The Temptation of St. Antony or A Revelation of the Soul by Gustav Flaubert, illustrator unknown as of right now but I'll research it later.

Once again no weasels

AN-T-AGRAMS

I'm starting a new series of very short posts...most likely a short series too as I'll likely forget or god forbid there might be something worth photographing.

There were many more anagrams from "I had Always Intended To Explain How I Bred Certain Of My Ants" which never did have drawings done for them.

So I shall occassionally drop one in here with a more or less relevant image selected by typing the anagram into Google and picking my favourite from those images it suggests.

An-t-agram #1

When does I.I. 'Fatty' Wilcox bathe? Rarely, I note, and in damp sand.