Living in the past XXIIX or XXVIII


We’re into 2016 now. The Girlfriend loves calla lilies and we’ve had them a couple of times, but they never seem to last more than a year or two. Still, while this one was blossoming, I got extraordinarily lucky in that a newborn Chinese mantis scampered around the bloom while I was there, and I got several frames. This one in particular became an art print and was displayed read more

Living in the past XV


Another from 2014, I always liked this direct portrait of a minuscule crab spider (genus Mecaphesa) – I went back to the original post to find that she measured 6mm across the legs in this position, which doesn’t make her a whole lot bigger than a tick.

Then I looked at the date, which was familiar, and thought, Is this the last arthropod photo that I took at the old place? Because read more

Last night’s contributions

I actually have photos from three different sessions to get to, but we’re only going to feature one right at the moment, from early last night as I stepped out to do my routine patrol of the yard. After having not seen much of the bebby Carolina anoles (Anolis carolinensis) since the heavy rains a few days ago, save for a token appearance on a decorative sweet potato leaf, I finally read more

Tried to help

After a horrendous storm tonight that dropped some much-needed rain, and then a lot more too, I was checking out the environs of Walkabout Estates, noticing that the edgeworthia/paperbush was significantly happier now – it had not liked the heat at all, and no amount of water that I offered seemed to help much. Nearby, though, something odd caught the headlamp, one of those little pattern-breaking read more

Two quick

It’s been a busy two weeks and I haven’t had time to do much for the bloggarino – a couple of the recent posts were actually scheduled days in advance. I should be more free now, but right at the moment, just two quick images from this morning, almost the same location but not the same time of day.

Heading out to breakfast this morning with The Girlfriend and read more

Tried to slip one past, eh?

As usual, I had several egg cases of praying mantids to keep an eye on around the yard this spring: one Chinese mantis, two that I suspected were European mantis brought down from NY, and three Carolina mantis. One of the Carolina’s vanished over the winter, perhaps found by mice or something (this was before I’d mounted them on new stalks to keep them out of reach of read more

Visibly different, part 52

I had plans for a particular offering for this ‘last’ post in the topic, but it’s been taking longer than I have time for, and so we have this instead, though the original choice will appear later on – it’s in progress and one of those things that you shouldn’t rush.

So our opening image is from July 2012:


This is a Chinese mantis (Tendoera read more

Living in the past VII

We’re back to another installment of living out my glory years and realizing how unglorious they were, but you take what you got, because whatcha gonna do about it now? You should have thought about needing post material a decade later back then, shouldn’t you?

Though I admit, you have no idea how psyched I was to get this image back then, and I still find it pretty damn slick, read more

Visibly different, part 49


This image comes from 2011, when I happened upon the egg sac/ootheca of a Chinese mantis (Tenodera sinensis) sporting the newly-hatched young in a local park. The darkness of their eyes, I was later to determine, showed that they’d hatched out within the past several hours, and their proximity to the egg sac indicated that it was probably within the past 3 or so. read more

Still green

I had a few of these images waiting for an opportunity to write them up (while giving a little space from the last post about them,) and just now, I added some more. The raptors from the previous lake trip are still waiting in the wings – a ha ha ha.

We’ll start with the oldest, dating back to September 20.


This minuscule juvenile green treefrog (Dryophytes cinereus) read more

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