Laughing Gulls

Laughing Gulls on Pilings

No, I'm not in the Arkansas Ozarks at the moment.  Instead, I'm visiting my folks down on the Texas coast.  This shot was taken along the Lighthouse Point along the channel between Aransas Pass and Port Aransas.

.

Laughing Gulls

Armadillo Herd

A litter of young armadillos foraging in our yard late Wednesday afternoon.

Armadillos have a unique reproductive scheme. Only one egg is fertilized. That egg divides and the resulting two eggs also divide once. Hence, a normal armadillo litter is always identical quadruplets.

Adult armadillos are solitary. After leaving their nest burrow, litter mates remain together for a relatively brief time before going their separate ways.

For more information on the Nine-banded Armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus), please see:
The Mammals of Texas

.

Armadillo Herd

Flower Fly: Toxomerus marginatus

Flower Flies: Toxomerus marginatus

(Photo: Marvin Smith on 5/14/10)

Range: Common throughout most of the United States and southern Canada.

Size: Small -- 5-6 mm (around a quarter of an inch).

Food: Adults feed on nectar and pollen and are often found visiting flowers of herbaceous plants or shrubs. Larvae are voracious predators of aphids, thrips, small caterpillars.

Key Identification Characteristics: Thin abdomen with a continuous yellow band around the outside edge. On similar species, the yellow and brown stripes across the abdomen go all the way to the abdomen's edge. Abdomen tip is pointed in females and rounded in males. Large reddish brown eyes.

(Source: BugGuide)

.

Flower Fly: Toxomerus marginatus