Road of Peas

This post has been created for the Circus of the Spineless for August. It is number XII, and will be hosted at Sunbeams From Cucumbers. The butterfly pictures, and the first dancing aquatic worm picture were previously posted at Middle-Fork.

I found this butterfly, along with dozens more like it, near a trail to Skipper Lakes. This is on a ridgeline at somthing just over 5000 feet, on the south side of the Calapooya Mountains, overlooking the Boulder Creek Wilderness, part of the North Umpqua River drainage. There were many hundreds of butterflies very much like this one, but twice as large. The larger variety flitted away if I came within ten feet. The smaller ones ignored me, and fed away.

The Dancing Aquatic Worm was wiggling around over the crestline of the Calapooya Mountains and down on Staley Creek (which was once called the South Fork of the Middle Fork WIllamette.) There are some fine carved rock channels here. Two weeks ago I found an orange frog, which thrilled my boss, who had spent a few years researching chromatophores.

But, I’d seen frogs before.

This worm is something else entrely. As the creek flow dwindles, it leaves ponds behind. The worm was in a still water pond, and was constantly twisting and flexing. Every few seconds it touched the surface, perhaps to breath, but it may have been accidental, as it also bumped a couple water stiders, which did what they do best, and skedaddled.

UPDATE 23 Aug 2006: I made an exploratory plunge into little lake country to see how the mosquitoes were doing. There are quite a few close to the lakes, but by keeping my distance, I managed to avoid most of their attention. This is good; they will be gone soon. Not my favorite invertebrae.

But this critter! Wow! I think it’s my favorite. It looks like a common garden spider all dressed up for Gilbert and Sullivan. It was sitting in the sun, busy working on its web, 5 feet in the air and 20 feet from its anchor trees, and swinging wildly back and forth in the wind. It ignored me completely from this side of the web, but as soon as I walked wide around to the other side, it popped right into threat posture.