What is Big Ginger and Horny (Well, Horned at Least) ?

The answer is Odontotaenius disjunctus, the Horned Passalus. I found several of these big (1 1/2 inch) beetles in a rotted tree trunk in the little park across from the house. I didnt notice the little central horn on its head until it was ID'ed at BugGuide. I was distracted by all that ginger hair! All around the head and thorax and just look at those hairy ginger 'shins' especially on the second pair of legs.

The second image is the true color, black. The third looks blue but that's purely the color of the sky. This is, as Capt. Beefheart said, a Shiny Beast.

And on the side of the house I found a new-to-me jumping spider Lyssomanes viridis known as the Magnolia Green Jumping Spider. I'm not overly pleased with the picture quality on this as it was very small and pretty much translucent. Against the light siding it made for a poor shot.

 

Deep Purple

                                        

Looking at these on a good sized screen and not my phone I'm convinced I shouldn't post from my phone camera unless it's something special I couldn't photograph any other way. The spontaneity does not make up for the reduction in image quality on a screen bigger than 3x2. Like yesterday's lizard looked sharp on the phone but really it just wasn't sharp enough.

I Am The Lizard King

Five Lined Skink live from Norfolk Botanical Gardens

You Want Colour (or Color) We Have That

We have Rhododendron

A

and Iris

The 'black' (or at least very deep purple) iris should open today with the temperature climbing to 90F.

Oh damn it here comes summer and we barely had spring. I feel like it was snowing a couple of weeks ago.

Half Asleep Wholly Wonderful

Once more falling back on the Banished iPod for inspiration here is a favourite track from my favourite band of all time Henry Cow.

Founded in Cambridge in 1968 by Fred Frith and Tim Hodgkinson joined shortly thereafter by drummer Chris Cutler and home at various times of Geoff Leigh,  John Greaves, Georgie Born, Lindsay Cooper, Dagmar Krause and the semi detached Slapp Happy ( Peter Blegvad and Anthony Moore).

Their unique brand of Avant garde-agitprop-jazz-progrock-free improv continued until 1978 when they split and scattered their various talents to the four winds of musical weirdness.

Half Asleep- Half Awake is from the bands second album Unrest

Sorry the video for this is so ugly but it is the best sound quality I could find and thats what matters.

Henry Cow on stage.

Note comfy chairs and tasselled standard lamps. Very cosy.

Garden Day

A Good Thing

My stats tell me that someone came to Banished's Bugs today while searching the interweb for Ivor Cutler. This can only be a very good thing. If you don't know the creator of  "Life In A Scotch Sittingroom ' and so much more then you should scour the interweb for him too. You won't be sorry.

Indeed, start here

http://banishedsbugs.com/2011/11/because-were-optimists.html