A Collection From A Graveyard

                                              Deer and Turkeys, Allegheny Cemetery, Pittsburgh, PA

 

My wife and I started volunteering for find a grave a year or so ago, and while photographing headstones, it's easy to get engaged with whatever else is going on around us.  The impressive monuments, the landscape, the wildlife, all creating an ambiance that defies the typical creepy solemnity of a cemetery.

   

The Winter Crypt in Winter 

 

                                                      

                                                              Moorhead Monument

                                                 Temple of Memories Mausoleum

I usually refer to the Mausoleum as "Temporal Memories", and I've shot more pictures inside of there than anywhere else.  It's astounding, trapped in time from when it was constructed in the 1960s, including the decor. 

 
 

 

Tale of Two Wasps

TOP:  Giant Ichneumon Wasp
BOTTOM:  Horntail Wasp Larva

A few days ago a neighbor offered us some free wood, most of which needed to be split.  I have never been known to reject free wood, no matter how much work has to be done to get it ready for the fireplace.  So, there I was, pounding a star wedge into a chunk of maple with a sledgehammer, when the wood yielded to the efforts and cleaved in two.  To my amazement, in one of the larva chambers bisecting the pieces, a Giant Ichneumon wasp emerged.  I've seen them in the wild many times, but never encountered one while splitting wood, probably because I usually split wood in the fall as opposed to late spring.  I immediately went in the house to grab a camera to document it. 
After photographing the wasp, I began to more closely examine the wood, and found that there was an intact Horntail wasp larva still in its chamber, feasting on the wood.  The complete developmental cycle of these two very different wasps!  The female horntail uses an ovipositor to bore into the wood to insert her egg within, where the growing larva consumes the wood, creating a trail.  Meanwhile, the ichneumon wasp uses her antenna to listen for the horntail larva chomping and moving, and when she finds one, uses her even longer ovipositor to pierce the exterior of the wood and inject her egg into the horntail larva, which it then consumes.  Clearly the ichneumon is a parasitic wasp, but then so is the horntail.
Fascinating!

Say A Little Prayer Before Cannibalizing Your Siblings

Praying Mantis Cocoon, 2016


We've had some very mild weather, and while doing some much needed yard work, my wife came across this cocoon attached to a branch she'd just pruned.  Instead of tossing it into the giant paper yard waste bag, she gave it to me.  True love!  Anyway, I wasn't sure exactly what sort of insect had constructed this cocoon, but a quick google search righted my ignorance.  And as always happens when you come across something new, I learned about the life cycle of praying mantis:  egg, nymph, adult.  Pretty basic, and only remarkable in that while a nymph they are classified as hemimetabolic, as they under go an incomplete metamorphosis.  A nymph praying mantis looks exactly like the adult counterpart, only very small.  Typically an insect in the nymph stage looks nothing like the adult it will become.  So, in time, 100-200 mini-mantids will hatch from this cocoon and begin fleeing the jar lest they get eaten by their siblings.  I've taken the jar outside because ideally they'll hatch when the ambient temperature is conducive to supporting insect life.  I've also made it easy for them to escape the jar, although I hope that I get to witness their emergence as I would like to direct some of them to certain areas of my garden - to keep down pest insects, especially those blasted cabbage butterflies and their young!

Shadow Skull

Deer Skull Study, Pittsburgh, 2016


I liked the idea of the skull emerging out of shadow.