#tawny emperors

[professionalunprofessional]

A Tawny Emperor!

[heyitsrink]

Big shoutout to The Goblin Emperor, which I finished at 5:10 on New Years Eve, for being one of the reading highlights of 2023. It's tied for my favorite read of the year alongside my beloved Fool's Errand.

[windpurr]

My poor phone is crying for me to stop taking pictures but Nature's just so pretty!

[seanpgilroy]

Tawny emperor. Probably the grossest butterfly. They mostly feed on carrion and dung, you don't normally see them on flowers like this. But they do look cool.

[mandy-malady]

[xphaiea]

Tawny emperor egg cluster

[onenicebugperday]

@emordnilap-fr submitted: went on a walk recently, thought you may like some of these guys :]

unidentified caterpillar making the :3 face! i tried looking but couldn't ID it; location is southeast louisiana if you have any ideas

a couple varying orb weavers: orchard orb weaver, yellow garden spider, and spiny orb weaver!

and golden orb weavers!! you can see the gold silk, the one on the right was fixing her web and eating(?) the damaged threads!

That caterpillar is absolutely precious. It's one of the emperor butterflies - they have cute lil horns. In your area either a hackberry emperor or a tawny emperor.

VERY nice collection of spiders. The southeast is very lucky to have such a huge range of cool spider species. Please blow them all a kiss from me.

[skyrim-forever]

The Dragonborn's Inferno

Since my silly little post about wanting to write a crossover TES/Divine Comedy garnered a lot of interest I decided to go ahead and give it a shot! This is a little scene I'm working on for Canto I of Inferno.

Tagging those who showed interested in reading: @greyborn2 @lucien-lachance @thana-topsy @naturalbornlosers @ladytanithia @alicehealer @abstractredd @saffronornah @faenamoonseeker @notoriousbastardlover @alpha-centauriiae <3

Thank you so much for your interest it was really motivating, I hope you enjoy!

Canto I

Ascended half-way up the mountain  I found myself obscured in snow Confused, and I knew I lost the way

There was no way to tell where I was The snow blowing wildly in the wind To remember it sends a shiver down my spine

The wind so biting, but not worse than death itself Arkay’s embrace had eluded me that day For there was good to be found on that mountain

The wind had cleared to let me see That I was at the Throat of the World All of Tamriel within my vision

I could see much further than any time prior From the Adamantine Tower in High Rock To the festering jewel of Black Marsh

But the view did not remain mine alone For from behind me came the roar of a troll A frost troll, one that I had recognized 

Having fought this valiant foe before I was surprised to have found it again Especially now, on one such day

The troll lunges for my arm Narrowly dodging it’s fearsome claws I went to ready an attack

I did not have time to go on the offence For a golden figure appeared between the troll and I Reduced it to nothing but dust 

“Have mercy on me you, you the man before me” I shouted to the figure A figure which transformed into a man

A man of simple robes And medium length tawny hair Stood before me, his smile warm

“No longer a man, but in my mortal life I was one. I was born in the Imperial Province A commoner, meant to fulfill a divine purpose.

My youth was spent in debauchery, Until I found the Divines. Who never intended for me to rule.”

How could I have not known? I open my mouth to speak Fearful of stuttering in his presence

“For you are Emperor Martin Septim, 

The leader, the martyr, who died for Tamriel. You who embodied Akatosh in that great battle.”

I finished my statement by bowing Grateful that he had appeared to me To know that I did not walk this plane alone

“I come to you now, in my true form, Despite it all, in my heart I am but a priest, acting in his will”

Gesturing for me to stand up,  I obeyed the Emperor To which he spoke again to me

“You who have lived a thousand lives Dragonborn does not cover the extent of you life” The Avatar of Akatosh tells me

“You who have been Listener and Guildmaster, Moon-born and Vampire,  Stormcloak and Legionnaire”

I was humbled by his kind words That the Hero of the Oblivion Crisis And last true Emperor, would even speak to me

“You flatter me my liege But I stand but a humble individual Graced in your divine light”

And I continued to speak my praises “You who, along with the Hero of Kvatch Succeeded in destroying Mehrunes Dagon”

Through the grace of Akatosh, he laughed A slight chuckle in good will Divinity had only increased his kindness

“I say nothing that is untrue friend,  For I who has always known you,  See in my heart you, truly, as Akatosh’s chosen”

The Avatar of Akatosh himself Saw me as an equal, even if my actions  Pale in comparison to his

“Please, my Emperor, tell me about that day! The day Kvatch was attacked!” I plead with him

A warm smile emerged on his face “I’m afraid most memories have left me, Memories of my dear friend are gone.”

“Though I may not remember their name, Nor do I remember their face, I do remember the warmth of their friendship”

His eyes closed, basking in the memories “But I do not you are not unlike them Both prisoners burdened by destiny”

A moment of silence fell between us I waited for the last Septim to break it To which he did

“We must make haste Dragonborn,  For I have been asked to guide you. Another divine quest is asked of you”

And so we left that mountain The highest point in Tamriel Followed his lead into the void.

[archivist-crow]

On this day:

CENTAUR IN CENTERVILLE

On May 18, 1963, in the tiny town of Centerville, Illinois, police were bombarded with over fifty phone calls from people who had seen a centaur. The mythical creature had first been seen in St. Louis, just across the Mississippi River. A group of school children said they had witnessed a "half man, half woman with a half bald head and a half head of hair" prowling around a housing project and vanishing into an old tunnel. A St. Louis Police Department patrolman declared that the children had definitely observed something and that the beast apparently tussled with a man near the school. The centaur was also seen by a shocked James McKinney, directly in front of his house. He said, "It looked like a half-man, half-horse." The creature appeared to be in the area for two weeks.

Greek poets tell of a race of beings having arms, chests, and heads of men, but bodies like those of horses. Living in Thessaly, this species was reputed to have groups that were kind and groups that were savage. In the mythology of the Iliad, the centaurs attended a wedding, but became drunk. They then attempted to make off with the bride and other women at the feast.

During the second century AD, Phlegon of Tralles wrote his infamous Book of Marvels. One of the book's many sensational stories tells of a hippocentaur, captured in Arabia and sent, as a gift, to Egypt. Unfortunately, it died and was then embalmed and offered to the emperor of Rome, who displayed it in his palace. The centaur had a fierce face, a tawny mane, hairy arms and fingers, and ribs joined to its front legs, which ended in hooves.

Text from: Almanac of the Infamous, the Incredible, and the Ignored by Juanita Rose Violins, published by Weiser Books, 2009

[rjzimmerman]

These ‘Trash Trees’ Are Actually a Banquet for Wildlife. (New York Times)

Excerpt from this New York Times Op-Ed from Margaret Renkl:

Hackberries are native to Alabama, where I grew up, but I was a child born of the piney woods, and I don’t recall ever noticing a single hackberry in my youth. The trees also grow in South Carolina, where I went to graduate school, but they didn’t register with me there, either. I was a newly transplanted Tennessean before I learned about “trash trees,” as people here call them.

The common hackberry is widespread from New England across to the Dakotas and down through the Midwest and Upper South. The Southern hackberry, a species also known as the sugarberry, blankets the Southeast down through Florida and west into Texas and northeastern Mexico. The two species overlap — and sometimes self-hybridize — in Tennessee. The Nashville naturalist Joanna Brichetto, author of the new book “This Is How a Robin Drinks: Essays on Urban Nature,” calls Nashville “the hackberry capital of the world.”

I don’t know if people call them trash trees in other places, but hackberries are widely disdained in the hackberry capital of the world. Their bark is a rough swath of warts. Their pocked, wrinkled, gall-infested leaves always look a little sick. In spring, their flowers drop to the ground and cover the sidewalks, and in fall their berrylike drupes do the same, without any gorgeous fall color to compensate for the mess.

One of the hackberries’ least desirable characteristics is not, strictly speaking, a feature of the trees themselves. Hackberries are targeted by the invasive Asian woolly hackberry aphid, which like all aphids excretes a sticky form of waste called honeydew. In wet summers, rain washes the honeydew away, but in dry years, the honeydew can accumulate and promote the growth of a soot-colored mold on whatever — car, sidewalk, patio furniture — happens to lie beneath the branches of a hackberry tree. “The mold is absolutely harmless,” Ms. Brichetto said when I asked her about it, “but people freak out.”

Unluckiest of all for a tree trying to survive the built human environment, hackberries have a growing habit that also freaks people out. Hackberries can grow giant horizontal branches that sprawl out across great expanses. Left unpruned, those heavy old limbs sometimes drop onto houses during storms.

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By now you’re thinking, “Yeah, that’s totally a trash tree.” I spent my first years here thinking the same thing.

But then, one fall, I started noticing something about those drupes and those gnarly, pitiful-looking leaves: They were feeding a vast array of my wild neighbors at a time when everybody desperately needs to eat. The locals need to fatten up for the cold winter ahead. The migrators need to fatten up for their long journey.

The hackberry is the host plant for dozens of lepidoptera species: 49 here in Middle Tennessee, according to Ms. Brichetto. Butterflies who use hackberries as a nursery include the tawny emperor, the question mark, the mourning cloak and, of course, the beautiful hackberry emperor. It’s impossible not to love a hackberry emperor butterfly. These gentle creatures will land on your skin to partake of the salt and other minerals in your sweat. The behavior is called puddling, and many butterfly species can be found puddling in the mud. Hackberry emperors will puddle right on your hand.

Combine all the juicy caterpillars dining on hackberry leaves and all the tiny, protein-packed bugs inhabiting the galls and all the fruit the hackberry itself produces, and it becomes clear that a hackberry tree is a banquet set with something for everybody. Including us.

[worm98]

You are so cool! Do you keep any bugs? Have you taken any bug pictures that you're particularly proud of?

thank you so much!!! i really needed to hear that. anyways, yes i do keep some bugs!! i mostly have just random terrariums here and there with nothing special in them but i DO have an Isopod Farm that has been up and running for around a year now. oh yeah, i also have a bunch of baby Polydesmidae goobers running around a tank. and for the bug pictures, BOY do i have some cool ones!! first, there's these pictures i got of a Salt Marsh Moth i raised from a caterpillar that had just came out of it's chrysalis!! it was one of the first catch-raise-release type things i did, it was so cool

one of these pictures is actually my pfp on inaturalist!! ^^^ another cool picture i've gotten is of a Tawny Emperor that i found sitting almost perfectly on some chewed-up Buffalo Gourd

and last but not least, the rarest thing i've EVER found!! Myrmilloides grandiceps!! they aren't the prettiest pictures but like i've said, they're the rarest thing i've found before so i think that counts for something. they only have 95 observations on inaturalist, and i have the latest observation as of now!! here's the link to it: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/231871725

anyways yeah!! thank you so much for sending me an ask, it was fun answering some questions

[ineffablelunatic]

BBC Ghosts characters as butterflies and moths

Based on vibes and names alone (one day they'll come out and be their fabulous selves!)

Captain: Red Admiral

Julian: Pipevine Swallowtail

Fanny: Cabbage White

Kitty: Elephant Hawk Moth

Robin: Lunar Moth

Pat: Tawny Emperor Butterfly

Humphrey: Monarch Butterfly

Thomas: Swallowtail

Alison: Painted Lady

Mike: Rusty Tipped Page

[windpurr]

I had some crazy luck with my butterfly pictures got a lot of tawny emperors and one green June bug swaming a tree and go some pretty good pictures.

[smellybead]

Fav bird?

OKOK SO

Barn owl is probably my no.1 fav bird although I'm fond of all owls

Pigeons are my 2nd fav!!! I hope to get a pet one eventually.. they make excellent pets. Did you know pigeons produce their own milk?? It's called crop milk and (male) emperor penguins and flamingos also produce it. It's made in a special organ called.. you guessed it the crop. The crops basically where birds can keep their food before starting to digest it. I have other pigeon facts but I'll spare you

Sooty and pied oystercatchers are my 3rd fav/s ... they're sooo silly and cool and I'm hoping to be able to get some nicer pictures of them the next few months, now that I have a slightly better camera than, my last one (which broke ☹️)

Pied oystercatcher:

Other birds I'm fond of include all penguin species (especially fairy/little/blue penguins), albatross, Australian magpies (they are my friend :) we share prawns :) ), honestly any marine bird, tawny frogmouths (they are so lovely, gorgeous gorgeous birds), and wedge tail eagles!! Wedgies are fantastic and sooo stunning up close. Looookkk:

OHHHH HOW COULD I FORGET..... APOSTLE BIRDS..... They're soooo silly and fun. I love watching them play wrestle and roll around and chatter to each other but they WILL attempt to steal you shoelaces

[sparreaux]

I've seen a few of these beauties, but this is the first time I've managed to snap a pic. I think this is a tawny emperor!

[mel-smeld]

Not even all the butterflies I saw in Texas, just the ones I could snap pics of! There are over 400 species of butterflies that can be found in Texas, making it the most diverse butterfly state in the US. Missed out on seeing some of my life list moths (Luna,Io, Cecropia,Polyphemus, and Sphinxes).

1.Pyrausta inornatalis, adult

2.Pyrausta inornatalis, catapillar

3.Common Buckeye

4. American Lady (Vanessa virginiensis)

5. Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta)

6.Question Mark (can you see the white question mark?)

7. Hackberry Emperor (larvae specialize on hackberry trees)

8.Tawny Emperor

9. Little Yellow

10.Gray Hair streak-can be found in Oregon too:)