The Land Between Rivers

Frenchtown Conservation Area, also known as "The Land Between Rivers" is a 496 acre nature area operated by BREC (Recreation and Park Commission for the parish of East Baton Rouge). The acreage consists of bottomland hardwood forest, including small stream forest and spruce-pine hardwood-flatwood forest habitats--both of which are ranked globally as rare or imperiled. It's great for birding, exploring and hiking. At the end of Railroad Trail (1/2 mile) is the Amite River with a nice stretch of sandy beach.

Two notable birds spotted were the painted buntings and yellow-breasted chats. Double D and I were over the moon! But you would laugh at my photos...especially the chat. All I could get was a blurred shot of his underside in a thick tangle of brush. Grrrr. No matter, here are some other things we saw...

Periodical cicada. Some call them locusts, but that is incorrect.
These 13-year periodical cicadas spend their lives underground feeding off the fluids from deciduous trees.
Once mature, they emerge all at once in staggering numbers. The sound is amazing. It sounded like
an ocean or swiftly moving river was nearby. Incredible!

I think this is a Needham's Skimmer.

An Eastern fence lizard, male.

Close up

The only time I've ever seen a pipevine swallowtail that stayed still for more than a minute.

My first time to see an indigo bunting away from a feeding station.
His expression says, "Who you lookin' at?"

Enjoy the weekend, y'all! My 31-year old "baby" is arriving today. We have a very short weekend together so I'll catch back up with you guys on Monday.

If you're squeamish, don't click this post!

One evening in early September, Double D stepped outside the front door to get the mail. He stuck his head back in the door and told me I should go get my macro lens and come outside. Oh, I was so delighted to see what my love had found for me to shoot.

A cicada! Finally! I had been looking for them all summer.

Attached to the stucco, close to the ground, this little stud posed like he was meant to be on the cover of Insect World. I set up as quickly as possible, afraid he was going to fly off. Excitedly, I began shooting like a paparazzi, and when I saw that he was being so cool about it, I used every angle I could think of. My neighbors must've thought I was crazy lying on the ground, contorted on my side. Ah well, you know what they say: if people aren't talking about you, you're boring. :)

Suddenly, it dawned on me that something wasn't right. I took a stick, prodding the cicada, ready to duck if he flew at me. Clink. He fell to the walkway making a hollow plastic sound as he clattered to the ground. My cover model was a SHELL! Did I feel stupid or what? lol The animal kingdom continues to fascinate and awe me.

Cicadas live underground as nymphs for most of their lives at a depth between one and eight feet. In their final nymph stage they construct an exit tunnel to emerge in order to shed (molt) their skin on a nearby plant and become an adult. Their exuvia or abandoned exoskeleton remains, still clinging to the bark of trees; or in this case, stucco. Their life cycle is roughly 2-5 years. The mating/egg laying process is very damaging to trees. More fascinating information on cicadas can be found here. If you do click on the link scroll to the bottom to see a neat animated gif of them shedding their exoskeleton.

EDIT: TexWisGirl and Terri are correct! This is a cicada that did not complete the transition. After looking more closely, you can see part of the body trying to emerge, but it didn't make it. Still, I'm leaving the post because I think he is a beautiful specimen. Thanks for your keen observation, girls!

Linking to I Heart Macro and Macro Monday 2. Thank you, hosts!!

Cicada Angel

Today wasn't the best day, so I was wandering around the backyard, inspecting all the plants, making sure my little flowers didn't need anything. As I passed by the crepe myrtle something caught my eye. I had to do a double-take. Was it a tree knot? Nope! I thought it was a locust, but after googling, it's some sort of cicada. What variety I have no idea, but he was fun to shoot and took my mind off my troubles for a bit. He seemed smitten with the tree angel.

All of these were taken with the Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 lens.

This was his buddy on the other side of the tree. I was grateful to get a couple of photos without the distracting angel ornament.

They both flew away not to be seen again for the rest of the day. I like to think they were God's special little gifts; something exciting and new for me to photograph. That's my theory and I'm sticking with it!