Chinese buffet

Returning from this past trip, I noticed that one of the Chinese mantises (Tenodera sinensis) was now perched on the balloon flowers within easy reach of the cat mint, which is notorious for attracting pollinators by the boatload, and thus was almost twice the size as when I’d last seen one due to this proximity to effortless meals.


I realize that this doesn’t show scale read more

Triumphant return

… or something.

I’m back from my escape room adventures, which have been greatly exaggerated, but that’s what you’d expect from someone who blew the post title twice (should have been Profiles of Nature, and we’re only up to 28.) Good thing I haven’t paid him…

Anyway, it was another trip, and I’ll provide a photo to let you guess where this read more

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Note:
Rumor has it that the person who usually does these profiles is currently on hour 14 of a 1 hour escape room. He is shouting through the door to the now empty lobby that “I’ve almost got it!” And “NO HINTS!”. That person should be back for the next Profile in Nature. It has fallen to me to perform this task. You’d think that I would know something about nature – or read more

New York: The raptors


I have a ton of bird photos from the New York leg of the trip to feature, so this seemed to be the best way to break them up unfortunately, the remaining ones may be a little while in coming, since some obligations are coming up. Right here, we have an osprey (Pandion haliaetus, but you already knew that,) hanging out in a dead tree near the Gatsby mansion read more

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This week we’re meeting Telemachus, just discovering that if you run into a door and you’re covered with spikes, this really hurts. Telemachus wants to be one of the top stuntcaterpillars in the business, and since there are presently no stuntcaterpillars in the business (this being Busby’s Budget Bookbindery in Brisbane,) he’s got both ends of that read more

So current

Still plenty of photos to feature, but the posts I have planned are not quickies, and today was a bit busy. However, early this evening a neighbor came by and told us about the scene in his own backyard, so I grabbed the camera bag and trotted (ambled) over there. I’m getting a reputation – good or bad, I dunno, so we’ll just leave it at ‘reputation.’


This read more

The backstory (part 1 perhaps)

Let me paint the scene: It’s very early morning on Interstate 81 in Pennsylvania. I’d driven through downpours in the Philly area that were reputed to stretch for kilometers, but the roads were dry here. I’d been seeing the sky lighten steadily for over an hour, and knew it was about sunrise, but here in the foothills between the Appalachian and Adirondack ranges, read more

Past midnight

Last night, the rains finally came through, mostly sideways, and it’s safe to say we’re saturated now. The treefrogs were signaling their approval even before it started, while remaining mostly out of sight (yes, even to me,) but they prompted me to go out after it stopped, just barely into this morning now, and look around a bit. I got no photos of the frogs, but found a couple of other read more

Gotta be quicker than that

I hadn’t quite finished sorting the stock photos before I left on my trip, and of course doubled that number with the trip photos themselves, so I’ve been endeavoring to catch up (just a handful more to go now.) But while doing this, as usual, I came across a few photos to feature and comment upon. This one is trivial, but I want to put it here because more sunrise photos are on the read more

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Even when we were out of the state, the Profiles continued, so all hope of escape is lost – deal with it. This week we present Vigdis, a staunch advocate for hemp and CBD and suchlike products because she lacks the ability to comprehend anything of real interest. She also feels that her eyes are too close together, but this may be because she was adopted by hammerhead read more

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