a little wild   (a small slice of wildlife)

With plenty of people who actually knew what they were doing!

pupa of Callosamia promethea, Promethea Silkworm moth (Sphingidae):

Next set of observations from the same sample of pond water from my backyard (also includes some moss from the tree in the front yard). IMPORTANT: this time, I did not ingest any pond water at all. Yay for small victories!

I’ve enjoyed this enough I really want to consider getting a “real” microscope.

I don’t really have terribly good identifications for all of this.

I think this is an ostracod. It was about 2/3 mm long.

I’m not sure what this is. Maybe another ostracod? It was about 1.5mm long.

I have no idea what’s going on here. On the lower right, I think is an ostracod. The rest of the object seems to be the carcass of an insect, perhaps? About 2mm long.

A better photo of a copepod with eggs:

The individual cells in this plant?

Took some moss from the tree in front of the house; mixed it with water from the pond behind the house. First cut at using the digital microscope, this is a copepod female with eggs, I believe. Next time, I’ll try to look for other creatures.

First lesson learned: NEVER EVER TRY TO USE A STRAW AS A PIPETTE, GAURAV, YOU IDIOT. Especially when dealing with pond water.

It seems that Youtube degraded the video quality quite a bit, unfortunately; the original video looks much sharper.

Another snowfall, another walk. Late in the evening, not a great light for photos. Let’s see if anything usable came out of it!