Your paph is a hybrid. To find the species involved you can google each of the parent names and possibly find the species. Someone here with Orhcid Wiz might chime in & give you the info you seek too. Can you post a pic of your new plant? That would tell us a lot more regarding the droopy leaves & the spot you're concerned about.

Oh, nooooooo! SPF has come down with it now, too! This is a spell, that's what it is! Looks like the work of the Wicked Witch of the West to me...I can see her now, gazing into the crystal ball and murmuring, "Gaaaaalinules...galinules will make them delusional. Rave, my little pretties...raaaaave on." Stop the madness, I say! Everybody knows the very best delusions involve things with sharp, pointy fangs who want to neck after sundown! Okay...you can have your treeing galinules, if you insist. Just leave me all things vampity, and I'll be delighted. *happy shiver* Marcia

Having grown up with paper wasps, I see them somewhat differently. While they leave me alone in the garden, if their nest gets bumped (like in a canoe), they will defend it vigorously, and their stings are really painful. I don't think of them as non-aggressive, but rather as being very aggressive if you give them cause, and willing to leave you alone if you don't. Now mud daubers or dirt daubers have always seemed to me to be much more passive. I've been stung many times over the years by paper wasps, mostly as a child, but never by a mud dauber, even when I was knocking down their nests from doorways, etc. But worst of all are hornets. Oh, my. You do NOT want to bump into a hornet's nest (the ones that look like big paper footballs). Hornets and yellow jackets seem to me to be far more aggressive than the other wasps I'm familiar with. Eeeek. Right after we moved into this house, we had yellow jackets suddenly appearing all over the INSIDE of our windows. We were told they probably had a nest inside the walls and that it could be huge. But they started dying on their own shortly thereafter, and never came back. I was sweeping up piles of yellow jacket bodies for weeks. We were lucky that they expired on their own, I reckon. Might have been a very different story if they had hung around long. Marcia

Very cute little merganser there! I don't know much about duck migration but I checked Birds of North America Online (Cornell subscription site) and they say "Spring A late migrant and breeder. First migratory movement in Mar, intensifies in Apr; most breeders arrive on breeding grounds mid-to late May." and "At Cape May, NJ, overall numbers begin to decline mid-Apr; few observed after late May (Sibley 1993). In Massachusetts, movements late Mar–May with peak of 15,000 observed in Cape Cod Bay, 31 Mar 1984 (Veit and Petersen 1993). Winter birds depart Boston Harbor, MA, late Mar (Miller 1996). In Vermont, move mid-Mar–mid-May (Laughlin and Kibbe 1985)" It sounds like they all should be gone from CT soon and are unlikely to breed in your area. That said, I saw the first Brown Thrasher of the season today - they do breed here. Here with a Red-winged Blackbird: One of my favorite birds (I have a whole lot of favorite birds). Claire