Green Flash

Green Flash (Artipe eryx, 绿灰蝶). Female.

The hot dry season has started. I walked in Wangling park, which was littered with fallen scarab beetles and stunned eastern horse cicadas; the latter I think were affected by gardeners watering the trees more than the heat. In the woods there were plenty of live insects to see: I was particularly taken by this butterfly, which I don't see very often, although in late fall and winter one often comes across gardenia fruits with holes burrowed into them by their larvae.

Oriental Flower Beetle Protaetia orientalis

Oriental Flower Beetle (Protaetia orientalis, 凸星花金龟).

Common summer beetle, usually they are copper or metallic green or something in between those two colours. They are fairly distinctive, but one can distinguish them from other scarab beetles by the narrow white line on either side of the pronotum and the white spots on their backs (dorsal surface). They appeared in droves during the wet part of summer and their bodies litter the ground later in the dry heat. Fungivorous, but they seem to frequent a wide range of flowers and ripened fruits.

Cottleston Pie

A.A. Milne (1882-1956), Winnie Ille Pu, trans. by Alexander Lenard (London: sumptibus Methuen, 1994; 1958), pp. 52-53:

Crustulum, crustulum, crustulum cru
Cano aenigmata, canis ac tu?
Crustulum, crustulum, crustulum crum
Cerebrum meum est fatiga-tum.

Crustulum, crustulum, crustulum cru
Volitant aves, dic volitas tu?
Crustulum, crustulum, crustulum crum
Cerebrum meum est fatiga-tum.

Crustulum, crustulum, crustulum cru
Sibilo bene, dic sibilas tu?
Crustulum, crustulum, crustulum crum
Cerebrum meum est fatiga-tum.

 

A.A. Milne, 'Cottleston Pie'

Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie,
A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly.
Ask me a riddle and I reply
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie.

Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie,
Why does a chicken? I don't know why.
Ask me a riddle and I reply
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie.

Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie,
A fish can't whistle and neither can I.
Ask me a riddle and I reply
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie.

Common Bluebottle

Common Bluebottle (Graphium sarpedon, 青凤蝶).

As soon as the heavy rain left, hundreds of bluebottle butterflies became active. Here are three enjoying a drink in one of the many cool impromptu streams still flowing down Yuelu Mountain.

Rich People

 Frank Rich, ‘In Conversation Chris Rock’, New York Magazine (1 December 2014):

[Rich:] Is it possible that they’re just angry, whether it’s anger at Obama or Washington in general, and they just want to lash out? If you’re angry, you don’t rationally consider what’s in your self-interest.

[Rock:] Maybe. But we had Bush for eight years. They saw what that was. Apparently a lot of people want to go back to that. A lot of people think rich people are smart.

Now-you-see-it

Unfortunately, nature is very much a now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t affair. A fish flashes, then dissolves in the water before my eyes like so much salt. Deer apparently ascend bodily into heaven; the brightest oriole fades into leaves. These disappearances stun me into stillness and concentration; they say of nature that it conceals with a grand nonchalance, and they say of vision that it is a deliberate gift, the revelation of a dancer who for my eyes only flings away her seven veils. For nature does reveal as well as conceal: now-you-don't-see-it, now-you-do.

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2011; 1974), p. 18.

Serrognathus Titanus Patymelus

Serrognathus titanus ssp. platymelus (中华扁锹甲). Male.

A giant stag beetle, this subspecies is common throughout China and is fairly easy to find on wet (but not heavily raining) days in summer in Changsha. They are lugubrious and slow: carefully plotting their path with their jointed feather-tipped antennae before moving ahead. The male is much larger than the female and has large antler-like jaws, with several small teeth along the edge and two big teeth on either side towards towards the back.

Wonder

 σέβας μ᾽ ἔχει εἰσορόωντα

wonder takes me as I look on

Homer, Odyssey, VI.161. My translation

Diversibipalium Virgatum

Diversibipalium virgatum.

A small land planarian. The species has recorded in China and is described as brownish-orange with five dark dorsal and lateral stripes, including a median dorsal stripe running onto the headplate. It was moving across a footpath on the south-east part of Yuelu Mountain after a month of heavy rains.