New County Park Walk

[USAF-Larry]

Discovered a new county park with good walking trails today. They didn't have any mile markers for any of the trails, so I just walked all of them. There were some really steep hills, which resulted in 31 floors being recorded by the Charge 2 tracker. A total of 3.85 miles, 9,056 steps, and 31 floors. It was a beautiful walk, too!  Didn't see any wildlife, but did see a lot of butterflies on the fall flowers.

Viceroy Butterfly

Silver-spotted Skippers

[WendyB]

Looks like a great walk!

[USAF-Larry]

I forgot to add the picture of the pond, @WendyB.

[WendyB]

Looks awesome @USAF-Larry 😀

[Baltoscott]

@USAF-Larry -- Neat that they wrote the signage so that the reflection rather than the original is readable. 

[USAF-Larry]

Yeah, I thought that was cool, @Baltoscott, and I had to take a picture of it!

[Baltoscott]

@USAF-LarryI would have said your first butterfly pic was a Monarch (one of the few I thought I could identify) until I googled Viceroy.  And, since you clearly have some expert ID skills, can you tell me what this one is?  Got the picture last week in a sunflower field North of Baltimore. Haven't found anything on the internet that quite looks like it.

[USAF-Larry]

It looks like a Great Spangled Fritillary, @Baltoscott.

[Baltoscott]

Thanks @USAF-Larry.  Some kind of Fritillary for sure!  And since we identifying bugs, can you help me on this guy that was eating one of the many bees? (Funny story (from a guy who grew up in Kansas) -- I passed my phone around with this pic at a family crab feast last week on Maryland's eastern shore (to see if anyone could ID) and everyone was grossed out ... then they calmly went back to their beer and converstation and starting ripping apart and eating steamed crabs! 

[USAF-Larry]

That looks like an Assiassin Bug, @Baltoscott. Can't be sure from the picture, but that is what it looks like.  We have a lot of them here in SW Ohio, and they are one of the few things that will eat the Japanese Beetles when they are in the area. If they land on you, they will take a pretty good size chunk of skin out with their bite, but they prefer other bugs over humans....

[Baltoscott]

Whoa. Thanks for the ID. Assassin bug pretty much describes the creature that was hanging out on that sunflower waiting for a bee to show up.  Here is another pic.

[WendyB]

He Ugly @Baltoscott

[USAF-Larry]

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@Baltoscott wrote:

Whoa. Thanks for the ID. Assassin bug pretty much describes the creature that was hanging out on that sunflower waiting for a bee to show up.  Here is another pic.

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Yep, that's an Assassin Bug.  They're ugly and mean, but they are a beneficial insect to have around.