Diario de kicadacat

At least here in the Northern part of the Northern Hemisphere!
I am looking forward to seeing Australia's cicada season, but while I'm awake and not sleeping (oops) I thought I would give myself a little run down of this year.

I joined inat in May, and did submit some older photos of interesting things.

So for this year, I observed 123 species, 116 of which were on my property.
I still have a few photos of some dead moths I found to submit but we will leave it as this, for now.

Absolute highlights for me this year include the following:

• hearing the lone cassini on my run
• finding the slug lair, and just in general all the leopard slugs out there this year
• the purple polypore on the dead stump
• seeing that enormous dragonfly flying around when I was at the zoo
• grabbing that dark lyric cicada from a feral cat's clutches
• finding a brood x straggler shell at the same time as the above
• witnessing six! annual cicadas emerge, two of which occurred during the day
• seeing that broad necked root borer hanging out on the shutters
• all six of those stag beetles who graced me with their presence
• seeing a katydid oviposit!
• seeing both a hummingbird clearwing and a snowberry clearwing!

I'll try the attaching some of these observations to this post to see what that does.

I went mothing for the first time this year, and I cannot wait to do it next year. I will still go sheeting in November but I have a feeling it will be too cold by then. I found so many new things I hadn't seen before this year, and it just really proves that if you go looking, you will find something. I had intended to do the "1,000 things in 1 acre", which is why most of the things I saw were on my property. I had tried to only do things there so I could keep track easier. But I think next year I will try to go looking for things on my hikes and other places, too. Because there's a big world out there and I want to know what I can find!

There were a few unfortunate things that happened this year. I did find a squished cicada nymph, and one that got stuck in its shell. The two trees out front got struck by lightning (journal about that here). I also found a lot of dead bugs, but I do collect ones I find dead. I've cast some in resin (mostly cicadas, as they are easier), but the rest just kind of hang out in a container in my garage. I should probably try to pin them or something, but I don't really want to stick a pin in them even if they are dead. I was the kid who could not put a worm on a hook while fishing, either. (To me, lures existed and fish liked those, too.) However, I have a ton of cicada wings both brood x and annual I should probably pin, and that wouldn't bother me to do.

Now that winter is coming I have to up my birdwatching game. I've never really gone looking for birds, or bothered identifying them beyond the common ones. But we put seed out all winter and the neighborhood crows occasionally arrive to eat it (which is my favourite thing, I love crows) among all the other birds. It is definitely much easier to see birds in the winter lol. And when we have snow there will be animal tracks to identify. Other than that, I am not sure what to go looking for. I've been looking for inverts for months I don't know how to take normal photos anymore.