4 June 2006, Ellen and I drove up to Travis's house in Sunset. Travis had set
out a crawfish trap in his pond in hopes of capturing either a western lesser
siren, Siren intermedia nuttingi or a three-toed amphiuma, Amphiuma
tridactyla. He has seen them both in there before, and on Friday night, we
(myself, Travis & Steven) had seen an amphiuma, so I was optimistic. I called
Travis Sunday morning, and he reported that he indeed had an amphiuma in the trap.
So, Ellen and I were on our way. After taking several shots of and with the amphiuma,
we turned it free back in the pond.
We walked around his property for a little while, and Ellen got to visit with
the miniature horses that are boarding at the Huval residence. We saw many cool
bees and wasps, and I stood patiently over a concrete bird bath and got some pictures
of European honey bees and some cricket hunter (?) wasps. Travis's Mother has
a beautiful butterfly garden, and I took advantage of the variety of
blooming flowers to sneak up on a fiery skipper for a picture. Oh...let me back
up a bit. While photographing the bees and wasps in the bird bath, Travis dug
up a couple of nice large patent leather beetles.
After a brief stroll on the side of the house (and a very impressive showing of some of Travis's wood work), we turned up, but could not photograph, a cuckoo wasp and a very small velvet ant sp.
A huge thanks goes out to Travis's Mother for the delicious freshly hand-picked blueberries and the banana bread!
-James
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