Nature, and plenty of it

We are seeing so many different animals and plants each day, it's amazing. Here are some of our latest finds. Not all have been identified yet.

This is a bug that we found crawling on the side of our house. REALLY long antennae, huh?




Oh, I have one rule.
Animals, outside.
People, inside.



This is a photo of a katydid. Oren found this on a leaf near our house. Pretty good camouflage I'd say.
Most katydids are nocturnal. They make noises like birds by rubbing their two front wings together. They can be identified by their song, just like birds.








Most nights we enjoy looking out the window, or actually just looking at what's flying around on the outside of the window. This particular night we had the porch light on and the boys noticed these HUGE moths outside. We went out to investigate and the animals didn't seem to mind our poking and prodding at all. I'm working on their I.D. but for now I'm not even sure if they are butterflies or moths.





Oren learned how to gently slip this fingers under this animal to pick it up without really disturbing it!
Pretty cool..










Last Saturday we took a walk with a few friends. We found this amazing wasps’ nest in a cliff along the side of the road. It looked like the nest was made of mud.
If you look closely at the photo there is a small entry hole near the bottom of the nest. These wasps are called Synoeca wasps. They are metallic blue black in color. When they feel threatened or annoyed they scrape their abdomens across the ripples on the nest to create a raspy noise that will hopefully scare off their attacker. If that doesn’t work they just do it in a more agitated way that begins to sound like a locomotive chugging down the tracks. Their last defense is to take flight and attack. Luckily for us, we must not have looked threatening because they totally ignored us.