Just a few last things from Tennessee - Post 4

These are the odds and ends pictures for Bledsoe Creek (which, by the way, I never did see a creek there.  There was a lake... no creek.)

 The Tiger Swallowtail and the Pipevine from the first post were actually hanging out together when we were shooting them.  That was one of the major reasons I thought the pipevine was a black morph tiger.  Just look at the accent color schemes on both - the same blue and orange dots.

American Funnel Web Spider (2012 - 014)

 Wow, I think I was actually able to research the name of a spider.  It's harder than you think.  There are a truly stupid number of different spiders out there.  Also, I kind of gave myself the heebie-jeebies while doing it because of the pictures of Black Widow spiders on the same page.  Being from Illinois, especially northern Illinois, I forget that there's a lot of really, really dangerous wildlife in warmer parts of the country.  We don't have poisonous snakes or spiders to speak of up here.  So anyway, this is an American Funnel Web Spider.

Here she is in her entrance, the stripes on her legs a little easier to see.

And here is her funnel web.  Which, honestly is what made her so easy to identify.  Apparently there's only one particular funnel-web in Tennessee. :)





 

Northern Cardinal (2012 - 015)

 While going through my older posts for the comprehensive lists I realized I'm ignoring things I find commonplace.  Mallard ducks, robins, red-winged blackbirds...  And cardinals.  Like the Blue Jay, I want to get a really good cardinal picture some day.  This is about as bright as Illinois constant-dwellers get.  This one was seen in Tennessee, but we do get them up north and I need to stop ignoring them just because *I* see them all the time doesn't mean everyone else does.

And as a closing note... Cyprus tree nodules.  These projections are coming up off the Cyprus tree roots.  There's something very "medieval people go to Stonehenge" looking about these odd bits of tree root.




So that was my nature-seeking in Tennessee.  Chicago's starting to warm up now so I'm getting some baseline shots.  What animals are here now, in April, so that as the migrations start in the next couple weeks, I can track the timing of various species coming and going.