But what about third spring?

So last night, when the weather was reasonably warm, I went across to the nearby pond to see what I could find. I had two primary things in mind, knowing they were likely stirring by this time: frogs and fishing spiders. With the possibility of water snakes. Of the first and third, I saw no signs, but the fishing spiders were available.

A quick note: The easiest way to find spiders read more

Arthropopourri

Just a handful of collected arthropod photos from the past few weeks, specifically excluding mantids.


Above, while pinning down focus on a pollinating sweat bee, a bumblebee flew into the frame as the shutter tripped, in a pretty optimal position compositionwise. Too bad the focus was so short.

And before I get to the next image below, a brief bit of background. While out at the nearby pond one night, read more

The different signs of spring


Sure, spring means flowers and new foliage and all that, but it also means a lot of other things too, ones never covered by any media outlet that exists. Here’s a look at the creepier signs of spring.

As The Girlfriend and I were coming in the back door yesterday, I spotted a flash of movement on the deck railing, which turned out to be a newly-hatched praying mantis. Now, I have a mantis egg read more

You can hide, but you can’t run


Actually, you can run if you want, and you may, because the image above is the least icky – it’s all downhill from here. You should know I don’t say that lightly…

What you’re seeing here is the larva of a green lacewing fly, family Chrysopidae, bearing the typical camouflage for this time of year, which is a nice coat of lichen – the background surface read more

Scattershots


Just a handful of recent images, incorporating both ‘found’ and ‘planned’ photos – nothing deep to be found here. Above and below, a grey treefrog (either Hyla versicolor or Hyla chrysoscelis) was found squatting in one of the bluebird boxes one midday, to my surprise in a position that provided the full view of the autumn sun, now read more

So, spiders


And so, we rejoin our hero in his further adventures of spider encounters and arachnophobia…

When I did the detailed portraits of a largish wolf spider (family Lycosidae) a few days back, I released it under the porch steps and vowed to keep an eye open. Accommodatingly, the spider assisted read more

It’s just to illustrate, honest

A few posts back I talked about a cool lens effect, where defocusing a subject far enough could make it virtually disappear. Yesterday, I captured an image that illustrates it even better. That’s really the whole purpose of this post. It’s not to creep people out or anything.

Your read more

Harken back

This is a revisit of a post from a few years ago, partially because I always wanted to tackle the images better, and partially because this is the season for it. But at the same time, this post is aimed in part at the people with a fear of spiders, because it just might be a factor in getting over this phobia.

If you go outside in the early evening, just as it’s gotten fully dark, and hold read more

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