Here are some critters I found in the countryside for this #wednesdaywalk by @tattoodjay
I took a long hike in the palisades state park next to the Mississippi river. Here the river kind of breaks up into a bunch of little rivers one the edges of the main river.
There are quite a few overlooks onto the river from the state park.
These high overlooks were all covered in lady bugs.
I'm not sure if they are naturally hatching on these overlooks or if the farmers released them via plane as a natural pesticide...
This poor spider had to blend in. It looks a bit alarmed and ran into this crevice after the lady bugs walked all over it.
I also found a strange alien artifact... What could it be...
Its just the pupa shell and leftover skin from a wooly bear caterpillar.
Swarms of ants were everywhere on the sides of the path.
Loads of mica caps were also hatching next to the path. Sadly I found no morel mushrooms the whole reason I even went out to the countryside.
Only a few birds decided cooperate with my zoom lens. This cardinal wasn't one of them, he flew off as I tried to get closer. I'll probably have to drive out here again this weekend to search for my beloved morel mushrooms. At least the critters were entertaining along the way.
Happy #wednesdaywalk :-)
Very beautiful photography my friend
seeing the scenery there feels like going on vacation there
thanks for the amazing post
Most of my state is pretty flat but this little area has a nice bunch of hills and farms everywhere. Its a good place to escape the flat landscape for a while.
All your pictures are amazing.
But I really like the little yellow ladybugs.
Why can you find so many of them?
The farmers release them on the higher hills so they can fly down onto the crops and eat the insects. A natural pesticide.
So like that.
I was just surprised to see him, why they gathered so much.
Thank you for telling me.
You can even buy boxes of them at the hardware store here then release them into your garden to eat the aphids. Sometimes they even have preying mantis cocoons for sale as well.
Yeah.
That sounds really good.
I've never come across the pupa shell of a wooley bear, even though we have lots here.
Here we are overrun by the asian ladybug. But we only see masses of them in the fall around the first really cold days.
The shell was buried under some bark that I was picking around looking for mushrooms. They probably dig themselves under something while they are in pupa form. I rarely see anything other than asian lady bugs around here as well.