The cross orb weaver spider appears to be an import from Europe which has done very well in the New World (seen here in Centre County, Pennsylvania).  Generally identified by it's pretty orb web and the cross-like pattern of white blotches on the abdomen, it is a fairly common spider to see around out buildings and such.

​This spider spends most of its time at night in the center of the web, but also can do what this one is doing.  It is holding a line with its rear leg that leads to the center of the web.  Sort of like fishing, it is waiting for an insect to fly into the web and it will feel it on the line it has extended.  This allows the spider to be protected and off the web yet still know when it has prey in the web.

If you are not familiar with stinging nettle, this is what it looks like.

This stuff has a world of needles that really give a good sting if you brush up against it.  Pretty much a great plant to avoid walking through.

​So here is a photo of Josh Foust at a bat roost tree and the forest floor of stinging nettles that we had to walk through to find the tree.  Oh the fun of working with bats in the field some days, as this whole valley bottom was full of the stuff.

This moth, the Polyphemus moth, is named after a Greek cyclops Polyphemus.  Supposedly for the big eye spots on the underwings.  But when the wings are open there are clearly two eyespots making a complete set.  I leave it up to the reader to figure out that bit, although this one wouldn't open its wings completely for me.

​Sometimes we do catch the larger moths in our bat mist nets.  We take them out like we would a bat and release them.  Pretty animals.

The Arboretum at Penn State is such a great place to visit, and especially for cavers like me as they did up a fake cave for part of the gardens.  Very nice. 

​Yet while oogling the fake brass bats bolted to the ceiling (future blog post I assure you), we saw something quite real and alive in the cave.  Barn swallows. 

​The truth be told, barn swallows seem likely to have been mostly cave-related nesting specialists pre-civilization.  However, they are now are just super happy to nest all over man-made structures, like this neat-o fake cave.

So I have to end with this.  Notice all the little globs of mud in the nest, mixed in with a few bits of what look like pine needles.  All those mud globs were gathered in the bird's mouth and spit out into a nest.  Not just gathering a bunch of sticks for this guy.

FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS OR SO, I WILL BE POSTING ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY PHOTOS FROM CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA. 

​In much of eastern and central Pennsylvania, the very common little ground squirrel know as the Eastern Chipmunk (Tamias striatus) is known as a grinny.  No particular reason, but growing up in this region that is just what they were called, so to this day that is still what I call them.

​Cute little buggers, with this one seen munching on something nutty at The Arboretum at Penn State.

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House finch are pretty little birds, but don't get much attention.  So here is a photo of a male and female on a feeder in Roanoke, Virginia.

While not planning this, it seems that I have posted animals feeding for my last several posts.  Kinda cool.

The plague that is white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in the eastern US continues.  So many of these things and they cause much trouble. 

For people it is mostly the car accidents they cause and the millions of dollars in damages and even lives lost in those accidents.  But environmentally, when populations are as high as they are now, they strip forests of wildflowers and most vegetative growth below about 5 feet.  Forests have no upcoming generations of trees as they never get very large before the deer strip them of leaves and they die.

​But even in the rural but built up areas, where there is enough grass and low vegetation to feed a thundering herd of deer, they manage to find a way to be a bugger.  Here is a deer stretching hard to reach that last apple that is within the deer browse zone, right in the back yard of a house, with another house nearby visible in the photo.

​I like deer, but here in the eastern US we just have way too darn many of the things.

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Tonight I attended a meeting on The Dark Side in Washington, D.C.  There was surprisingly little talk about bats...

If you like mulberries, all you need is one tree and you will feast.  These trees can produce a prodigious amount of fruit, which looks quite a bit like a blackberry and is a deep purple when fully ripe.

​And the eastern gray squirrel certainly likes mulberries, and they are getting quite fat about now as there is a superabundance of food.  But they seem to prefer the fruit when it is still not quite fully ripe.  The fruit tends to go from white or green, to red (starts to get tasty) to purple (yummy!).  This squirrel was just stuffing himself in the late afternoon today, eating one berry after another.

The eastern cottontail (Silvilagus floridanus) is commonly found in gardens, parks and well most places in and around Falls Church, VA.  Best times to see them are late evening as they are mostly crepuscular (word of the day! means active in twilight as in around dusk and dawn) but they will also feed at night and sometimes just right out there in the middle of the day. 

​And no, rabbits are NOT rodents.  This is a common misconception but they are rather quite different and are in the order Lagomorpha.  This order is pretty much restricted to rabbits, hares and pikas, and just for one more tidbit, Lagomorph pretty much directly translates to "hare-like."

And just for fun, here is my favorite photo that I took today of the rabbit.

An interesting aside, from this last photo you can see that the eyes of a rabbit are so far apart that they are almost on opposite sides of the head.  The down side of this is that the animal has extremely limited binocular vision, but the up side is that it can see predators coming even from pretty much right behind it.  As a general rule, predators have more narrow, forward-facing eyes and prey animals have wider eyes for greater peripheral vision.