Gypsy Moth caterpillars nearly done eating

--and none too soon.  As they've grown, their droppings have become bigger and bigger, until they are now often BB-sized.  (Makes me afraid to look up, lest I see the mammoth creatures looking down at me.)  They are still active in some trees, but I have already seen a lot of cocoons in their favorite white oaks.

 Late in May caterpillars are barely a centimeter long,

and leaves are still nearly pristine (white oak, 5/27).

Earlier in June, caterpillars are numerous but small (white oak & black oak; 6/7)

These guys appear to LOVE white oak.  (How many caterpillars can you see?*)

A week or so later, they're a good deal bigger (black oak; 6/15, 6/17)

 A piece of newspaper left out under this big black oak for about 20 hours on 7/2-7/3...

...yielded only a few--but very large--caterpillar poop (aka frass). 

 Cocoons (chrysalises?) in neighboring twigs of one white oak (7/2).

Last year, I first found cocoons on July 2nd, and the first moths on July 11.  If last year is a good indication, we will be inundated with moths beginning in less than two weeks!

*I counted eight.

A day on the Vineyard

Friends of my wife with a share in an ancestral vacation cabin on Martha's Vineyard invited us out for the day.  It was a gorgeous day in a pretty place with generous, hospitable friends.  (This is more "travel" than "nature.")

From Woods Hole* to Oak Bluffs, the ferry takes forty-five minutes.  By taking the ferry, we avoid a day's sail, and passage among the rocks and reefs and currents for which the Hole is notorious.

Breakfast aboard.

Some Woods Hole residents give new meaning to the term "waterfront property."

Oak Harbor is a bit too cramped for the ferry, which will dock outside the entrance.

 The "Bunkhouse" is an idiosyncratic abode shaped by generations of extended family.

The view from the "bunkhouse" is maintained by occasional cutting.

The shoreline below the bunkhouse is rocky, but a pretty good beach lies about a quarter mile south.

People sometimes leave rock art.

I think this was once a seal.  It's too large for a bird and has hair rather than feathers. 
(Hind flippers in foreground.)  Gray seals--once rare hearabouts--have returned to these waters.

Seaweeds and animals regularly get stranded in the intertidal zone,

but I'd never seen anything like this.  I think this is a cluster of stalked barnacles.

A trek of several hundred yardsfrom bunkhouse to the beach

passes through meadow, woods, and swamp with a short boardwalk.

A small pond above the beach.

Every time we go, I replenish my supply of interesting and beautiful rocks.

Son exploring.

A three-sixty of the shore and sea.

Early evening, and shadows lengthen.

Early evening reading, and then nightfall.

We ate, talked, walked the beach, and just visited.  Not to waste opportunities, we aimed for the day's last ferry for the trip home--and just barely made it aboard.  With an hour's drive home, we were in bed around midnight.


*Yes, that Woods Hole: home of the famed Marine Biological Laboratory and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (home of Alvin).  

Backyard Field Trip

Almost the only "order" in our backyard is that which I impose on the vegetable garden.

(Tomato and dill sandwiches, you know.)

Some homeowners put time and money into fertilizers and poisons into a monotonous monoculture of lawn.  I prefer things wilder and more varied, a more complex living community.  It's also easier: let things be, and wildness results.  Except for occasional battles with the more invasive species--vinca, English ivy, Japanese knotweed, garlic mustard--I do almost nothing in the backyard except regard it with smug complaisance.

Just now, much of it is in flower, or very soon will be.  

I will be forced to mow soon, though: the dogs can't see where they are going, the oldest is worried about ticks, what will the neighbors think?, etc.  Before I do, I will memorialize my beautiful, luxurious backyard in a brief field trip.

A field trip among the plants that form my backyard "lawn" on a warm, sunny June 11.

A small-dog's-eye view of the backyard.

More about identification of grasses and grasses in flower.

 Most--but not all--of the grasses & grass-like plants that make up the lawn.