Aquatic snail's moving mouthparts

I'm not seeing much of my tadpole, but this aquatic snail seems to be making regular passes around the tank, munching on the algae as it goes. I thought the mouth (radula) looked funny as it worked its way along the glass.
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Centipede

I went for a walk on a local trail, hoping to find more tadpoles or eggs in the creek. I didn't see any, but I did find this cute little centipede under a rotting log.

In between the storms

Haven't felt like blogging too much lately. Nothing really new and exciting in my little world of bugs. But in between all the bad weather, I do poke around just to see what's in my yard.


Monarch babies surviving the rain and chilly temps.

This little bit of curbing next to my milkweed plant is sprinkled with lentil-sized snails.

Up close, they look like cinnamon rolls.

I try to rescue earthworms that come out of the soggy ground only to get stranded on the dry patio.

I have this big jar half filled with compost, and I toss the worms in there. When the rain stops, I'll find a good place to dump the jar out.

My one lonely tadpole has been slowly growing. I was reluctant to bring him to Mrs. W's class, because I didn't know if he would live. He seems to be doing OK, but definitely not growing as fast as they normally do. He spends most of the time hiding, so when I saw him right up front, I had to take his picture.

The snails and salamanders have the run of the place when the weather is like this. I watched this attractive slug for awhile on my patio wall.

Till he made his way back down to the ground.

He he! Funny salamander face! Don't worry, I was holding him gently.

Dubious

Those tadpole eggs I found the other week didn't do very well. Only 2 of them hatched. The rest just sort of decomposed. So far, I have not seen both tadpoles at the same time. I don't know if I'm seeing each one separately, or if one has died.

Freshly hatched monarch caterpillars

I have one little milkweed plant at home, and the butterflies have found it. There are several tiny caterpillars on it now.

Porch moth and millipede

I had a couple of nice little porch moths this week, but it turns out I've already posted pictures of this kind already. However, since I'm usually zoomed way in for them, this time I took it from a little further away so you can see the size of the moth relative to my doorbell.


And how about a porch millipede?

A slug eating a snail shell?

One night last week, Jerry accidently stepped on a snail on our front walkway, and killed it. The next day, I noticed a slug on top of what was left of it, eating it.




Actually, it looked as if it had just finished eating the shell. The slug seemed to be cleaning up where the snail's innards connected to the last bit of shell. Once the shell was gone, the slug stopped eating.


I had never seen a slug eat a snail shell before. I tried taking a stray bit of shell and offered it to another slug that was passing by, but he wasn't interested.