Monday, May 05, 2008

Open House

We were spending a quiet Sunday at home; it's been a busy week. But the word must have got out, and we had a constant stream of visitors.

The multi-footed kind. And a few one-footed ones.


Grey squirrel. Getting tamer by the day.



Scruffy. I finally discovered today, that she's female. And raising a family.



Cabbage white butterfly. Also female; you can tell by the two spots on her wings; males have one.



Robin. One of a pair that came at suppertime to forage for worms.



Snail.

This snail had been sitting quietly on the birdhouse for hours, but as soon as I decided to photograph him, he got very active. He took a great interest in the camera, and at one point decided to climb up the lens. Luckily, I was using my home-made lens, which was easy enough to clean.



I gave him a sheet of glass instead of my lens. And got a shot of his underside. Up front, if you click on the photo to see it full size, you can distinguish some mouth parts, looking like 4 pale teeth. There is a gland also at the front, which secretes a constant stream of mucus for the snail to slide on. (And to smear up camera lenses.)

There's a nice page on snail anatomy here.

Not photographed, but making their presence known; nuthatches, chickadees, pine siskins, a couple of flies, an American House spider, a batch of sowbugs, and too many slugs (now deceased).
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2 comments:

  1. Interesting picture of the underside of that snail!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I didn't know that about the Cabbage Whites; possibly because I never see them sitting still long enough to be able to notice spots!

    That's pretty neat about the snail's teeth, too. :)

    ReplyDelete

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