From a Mountain Hike

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Ken Ramos
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Joined: Thu Jul 27, 2006 2:12 pm
Location: lat=35.4005&lon=-81.9841

From a Mountain Hike

Post by Ken Ramos »

An absolutely fantastic weekend here in Western North Carolina. Sunny and warm but not oppressively so, I decided to waste a precious several gallons of gasoline and take off for the mountains. Spring has not yet arrived above 3,000 feet as of yet and that occured to me as I started up the winding roads of the mountains but what the heck, it was still a nice day. :D

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As I arrived at various areas and summits, it was as I expected. Though it was nice and warm, it still looked a lot like winter and, however, there were a few trees starting to bud and of course "dandelions" were everywhere, along with numerous bikini clad females :smt061 , lying on rocks, grassy knolls and stacked up like turtles on logs by the mountain streams. :smt045 I really have got to get a nice long lens before summer is over :lol: Anyway all I managed was a kinked neck and a couple of shots of what ever kind of insect this is partaking of the nectar of the dandelions. :D You know there is something about these pseudo-melanoma research volunteers, I just don't understand, I guess getting four to six thousand feet closer to the sun makes for a better tan. :-k
Last edited by Ken Ramos on Sun Apr 22, 2007 6:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

rjlittlefield
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Re: From a Mountain Hike

Post by rjlittlefield »

Sounds like a lovely day!
Ken Ramos wrote:...along with numerous bikini clad females :smt061 , lying on rocks, grassy knolls and stacked up like turtles on logs by the mountain streams. :smt045
You know, I've seen that, but somehow that particular analogy never occurred to me. It sure will next time, though, and I have a friend who will appreciate it too! :lol:

--Rik

BTW, your insect is a bee fly, perhaps genus Bombylius, the "Large Bee Flies", like http://bugguide.net/node/view/53799.

Edit: fix typo in name.
Last edited by rjlittlefield on Sun Apr 22, 2007 6:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Ken Ramos
Posts: 7208
Joined: Thu Jul 27, 2006 2:12 pm
Location: lat=35.4005&lon=-81.9841

Post by Ken Ramos »

Thanks for the identification of the "bee fly" there Rik. For some reason I never think of bugguide but that maybe due in part to having to search a diverse amount of digital images, in the hundreds, before you find what ever it is you are looking for and that is if you have no clue as to what it is to start with. :? I guess I lack a great deal of self motivation, unless I am counting "turtles on logs" of course. :lol:

Thanks Rik! :D

rjlittlefield
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Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2006 8:34 am
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Post by rjlittlefield »

I confess, I seldom use BugGuide to identify anything -- too slow.

I have books and I have spent a lot of time looking through them, so a bunch of the IDs are in my head and I can quickly scan for others.

On the other hand, BugGuide is a great source of images that can be shared at the cost of a URL.

And, every once in a while I find something really interesting out there. Just this week, I ran across some BugGuide images of ichneumon and braconid wasp pupas, that looked enormously like a pupa I found in the wild several years ago and had thought at the time was probably an unusually decorated tachinid fly. (See for example here.)

--Rik

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