As promised in the last post, this one now ties the record for the most posts made in a year, so everything after this is gravy, and whatever photo I put here will be the 1,000th picture uploaded for the year. Which is pretty damn good, I have to admit, but it has a few caveats. As always, there’s a small handful that were other peoples’ images, and some odds-and-ends stolen from the webbernets and so on, so it won’t be the 1,000th photo of my own – but we will likely still reach that point before the end of the year. Secondly, part of the credit/blame goes to doing the ‘On This Date’ posts; this isn’t the first time that I’ve done a weekly exercise, but I quickly ended up doing more than a single photo for each, so that added up. Still, I took all of those, and had to edit and upload them and even explain them, so they count.
I wanted to do something extra-special (because all of my posts are special, though we won’t examine the various definitions of that word,) but this is not the time of year to actually tackle something like that, and certainly not right now: it’s cold, grey, and rainy out there, with a dearth of subjects because winter donchaknow. And thoughtlessly, I didn’t save any whoppers to post for this event.
So here’s what I have. One from today, because I really did get something in these conditions, and it’s fairly representative of the year.
This has been the year for green treefrogs (Hyla cinerea,) and this one in particular has been nestled in some nook by the front door for weeks on end now, apparently reluctant to bury itself like everyone else. It remained in the window sash groove for a while, then disappeared on a warmer night, but reappeared behind the downspout and has been there for several days – whether or not it will finally seek a spot with more stable temperature remains to be seen. I’m just hoping it doesn’t overextend itself and freeze to death during a cold spell.
Having that photo in hand (and that was the best I could possibly get given the constrained location of the frog,) I decided to figure out just how representative it was of the year, knowing that it was one of two species of which I took oodles of photographs; the other is the Chinese mantis (Tenodera sinensis.) So, since I keep all of the uploads in an archive folder (backup against web server failures,) I tallied them up. Except, it can be hard to differentiate the Chinese mantids from the Carolina mantids in thumbnails, especially when skimming through 999 photos, so I combined them and just counted mantids. But the green treefrogs were easier to differentiate, and I didn’t count tadpoles or anything, so the count is likely off and some nitwit will be wailing and moaning about a recount, like that’ll help in some way. Regardless, the mantids outweighed the green treefrogs, somewhere in the vicinity of 74 to 57, and even fudging those two numbers probably won’t bring the treefrogs out ahead. Notably, there are no mantids of any kind to be seen out there right now (and by rights I never should have seen the treefrog either,) but I do have an unused photo from earlier in the year.
This was taken back in June, a surfeit for the post of the time, so it just sat in my folders waiting for another opportunity, and lo! here we are. It is drinking some of the water I provided by misting, because I take care of my subjects. More or less, anyway – I can’t make the treefrog bury itself, and I doubt it would be happy indoors.
But while I’m at it (and because one of those previous ‘image’ uploads was actually the blank space in this post,) I’ll throw down a couple others from within the same folder. Better safe than sorry, right?
I called this one, “Hedonism,” because yes, that’s intercourse for robber flies (family Asilidae) and yes, one of them has a hefty meal. Moderation, guys – get a grip.
Just to show you that this is not a throwaway post, I just did the webbernet research to determine that this is a common looper moth (Autographa precationis) from October. I’m pretty sure it had just emerged from that chrysalis underneath it, placed on the lemongrass plant out front. I look like that when I cut my own hair.
[No I don’t – I cut my own hair all the time, with a little assistance around the edges from The Girlfriend, and I look damn good. But less iridescent.]
And finally, I really liked the detail from the wings of this painted skimmer (Libellula semifasciata) that was taken back in July, but I distinctly recall that I had too many photos for the post then, and so left it off. Ha! Like that worked!
So there you have it: the 1,000th photo of the year, perhaps kinda, but at least the 1,000th upload, so close enough. And just so you know, that means better than 5,370 since the beginning of the blog. Meanwhile, I’m closing in on the 2,000th post, but that will still be a while yet, because presently this is the 1,924th – I figure about April or May next year. It’ll give you time to pick out an appropriate gift.