Field guide

lythir is about as good at keeping secrets as I am, apparently, and gave me my birthday present a few days early. It is a shiny new Audubon Field Guide to insects and spiders, and is proof that she, in fact, knows me. I now recall her asking me to ID the species of really obnoxious insect that has been proliferating like a plague of locusts around here for the last few weeks, and me shamefacedly admiting that insects is the one major field guide I didn't seem to have. (The horror!!!! My others include: seashore creatures, fish, tracks, ferns, flowers, berries, trees, reptiles and amphibians x2, mammals x2, marine mammals, whales and dolphins, hawks and of course birds x3).

This is just about as cool as the treatise on raven intelligence she got me last Solstice. thanx Lucy!!! Also, that &^%$#@!!!! bug? It is a Western Boxelder Bug, and I suppose it could be worse. /Jackel annoyedly flicks one off her shoulder as she pedals the bike/.

eggs: