Happy Chanukah!

Large view

Chanukah (or Hanukkah or however you want to transliterate it) begins at sundown tonight. The first day is December 16 -- the 25th day of Kislev in the lunar Jewish calendar -- with the previous sundown marking the beginning of the holiday: Erev Chanukah.

Two images went into this card, tweaked courtesy of MS Paint and MS Photo Editor....

I've posted both images here before. The first is a canna lily on the University of Tampa campus:


Large view

The second is the male Ceraunus Blue butterfly I found hanging out at the "post office pond."


Large view

On Monday I spotted the Wavy-lined Heterocampa below at the strip mall and recently got the ID, thanks to Tony Thomas, Bob Patterson, and Dennis Profant over at Bugguide.Net. Had I been looking at the right family -- Notodontidae instead of Noctuidae -- I would have found this images page for the species, which includes photos taken last year by thingfish23 (Taming of the Band-Aid) and by deadmike (Journal of the Plague Year).


Large view.

Heterocampa biundata, Family Notodontidae (Prominent moths). Larvae feed on beech, birch, cherry, hickory, maple, and willow. According to Auburn University, this species ranges from southern Canada to Florida westward to about the Great Plains area.


Large view

Other posted shots include: left side view, top head view, and stereoscopic.

I also recently discovered the deliciously funny Bugguide page on contributors (courtesy of Jim McClarin), which has been up since October.

---

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.