caterpillars

Monday July 30, 2018

Dave Bonta July 30, 2018

Overcast and blustery. A tiny caterpillar abseiling down from the elder tree has changed its mind and is slowly, flailingly going back up.

Dave Bonta June 18, 2016

Strands of caterpillar silk float on the breeze, appearing and disappearing as they pass through sunbeams. Ravens’ falsetto alarm calls.

Dave Bonta October 21, 2015

The yelling of a crow unable to raise a mob. Sun glints on caterpillar silk strung like abandoned bunting among bare walnut-tree branches.

Dave Bonta August 30, 2015

Wasps wallow through mounds of snakeroot flowers. At the woods’ edge, a yellow leaf trapped by a caterpillar thread never stops twirling.

Dave Bonta October 7, 2014

Cloudy and cold. A caterpillar climbs my leg, its brown form so extravagantly furred it resembles a miniature, misplaced fashion accessory.

Dave Bonta June 3, 2013 1

While the male chickadee calls from the end of a walnut branch, his mate combs the leaves for caterpillars, hovering, hanging upside-down.

Dave Bonta April 3, 2012 2

An old strand of caterpillar silk at the wood’s edge shimmers in the sun. A crow keeps saying something urgent in four syllables.

Dave Bonta November 9, 2011 1

Another cloudless morning. Sunlight glints on abandoned spider and caterpillar silk in every tree and between them—a threadbare garment.

Dave Bonta August 24, 2009

A bristly white caterpillar on the freshly painted white porch railing. The sky too is white, and the lawn with its banks of snakeroot.