It’s a funny thing about blogging. You don’t always end up writing what you started out to write. In my case, I planned to do a foodcentric blog about Southwestern Virginia with a little music and folk art thrown in for good measure. And I still plan to do that. But for various reasons I won’t go into, I haven’t been able to do as much touring of my little corner of Appalachia recently as I had planned. Therefore, I haven’t had the opportunity to see much folk art, hear much music, or try much food. As I spend more time working on the remodel of our humble little cottage, and tending our three and a half acres of paradise, I find my focus wandering a bit. The wildlife, particularly the plants and insects here on the creek, are absolutely fascinating.

The biodiversity of our little domain makes it a microcosm of the mountains themselves. The cottage sits in a holler on a little ridge at the bottom of a much bigger ridge overlooking a mini-valley with Galena Creek and a wildflower meadow at the bottom. The land behind the house slopes upward to Chesnut Ridge and is heavily forested. There are several biomes at work here. Biomes are what most of us have erroneously referred to as ecosystems. Science is constantly redefining its terminology it seems. It is the inhabitants of these biomes that have been the focus of my attention of late. I take a photo of a flower or an insect and go to the web to try to properly identify it. One link leads to another link and, well, we’ve all been there. The search for knowledge is often more rewarding than the attainment of knowledge. I’ve learned a little Latin and a bit about order and species and strata and other things I slept thru in school.

I tell you all this in order to justify showing you another bug picture. This one.

Meet Calopteryx Maculata, the Ebony Jewelwing Damselfly. Damselflies are very similar to dragonflies. They both eat mosquitoes and flies and other small insects. The difference has to do with the wingstructure, the eyes and yada, yada, yada. Sometimes a bug is just a bug. This one happens to have a striking appearance and I was able to get a pretty good shot of it.