Creatures of the zoo

[urbpan]

Cottontails are extra visible this time of year--babies are coming out of the nests, and adults are grazing on all the new spring vegetation.


Frequently I'm called to an area because of ants. Frankly, if they aren't stinging people, destroying wood, or invading a "pest zero tolerance" area (office, kitchen, hospital) I don't really consider them pests. Little guys like these are tricky to identify, and require a dead specimen and a magnifier, but I can identify our stinging and wood-destroying species with a bare eyeball.


Hundreds of mushrooms appeared in the soil of the not-yet open butterfly exhibit. Most of them appeared to be Armillaria mushrooms, but I'm not to sure about these. The annulus, or ring, is a bit different from the rings on Armillaria mushrooms. This one looks like flap of skin--it is the remnant of the "partial veil" that covered the gills when it was young--hanging from the stipe, similar to the annulus of an Amanita. Armillaria rings tend to be fleshy or cottony, in my experience.


Here's a tiny, early instar Gypsy moth caterpillar! It should probably be given a less racist common name. I humbly submit "Medford's Shame."


And then finally, here's a bunch of big slabs of oyster mushrooms. I might not have recognized them from this angle.


But this is how I saw it--unmistakeable white-gilled stalkless mushroom growing directly from dead wood.


"Are they edible?" Well, this beetle seems to think so!