The Backyard Science group regularly features the Daily Bucket. Here you can note any of your observations of the world around you. Insects, weather, meteorites, climate, birds and/or flowers, and more, are all worthy additions to the bucket. Please let us know what is going on around you in a comment. Include, as close as is comfortable for you, your location. Each note is a record that we can refer to in the future as we try to understand the patterns that are quietly unwinding around us.
I learned from OceanDiver's photos a few days ago, that the small dragonflies around my pond are probably actually damselflies. I set out to learn more about these exquisitely named, electric-blue aerial acrobats. One difference between damselflies and dragonflies, is that damselflies' eyeballs touch, while dragonflies eyes are separate.
I knelt down by the pond, magnifying glass held at arm's length, to peer closely at the suspected damselfly.
"Not so close," said the damselfly, As it darted another foot distant. "Keep that thing away from me."
"I just want to see if your eyeballs touch," I replied, extending the magnifying glass again.
"Do I know you?" countered the damselfly, dancing away. "I don't think so. We've heard the birds talking. You are always looking in their nests. The coots say you are advancing on their young ones. The killdeer think you are creepy. My eyeballs are my own business," concluded the damselfly, flitting from a purple iris flower to a freshly bloomed yellow lily.
I lay down by the pond, the surrounding stone surface cool on my cheek, my eyes at water level, watching the damselfly.
And the pond watched back, with a reptilian eye, barely about the mass of duckweed. It was a new, relatively large frog, whose body was perhaps three inches long. All native frogs in my vicinity top out at only an inch or two long.
"Dang, a bullfrog," I thought. Then the frog crawled up onto a pickerel stem. Bullfrogs have a ridge (the tympanic membrane) that curves above their eardrum and then turns down.
This frog had a much smaller ridge, more of a racing stripe, and it went straight back. I don't think it is a bullfrog. But all native frogs are either smaller, or do not live in the Valley. What is it? The damselfly won't reply.
Later, in the other pond, I spotted a clearly marked bullfrog. Its eardrum was smaller than its eye, meaning it is female. This is the latest, and largest bullfrog I've ever see in these ponds. But in eight years, I've never heard a bullfrog bellow from my ponds. Why would my yard have a small female-only bullfrog population?
The damselfly won't tell me. Meanwhile, Ms. bullfrog is posing on a lilypad, as I spy from above.
And the mama coot still won't let me too close to her teenage children.