Not that long at all

I was going to open this by saying, it’s been a while since we’ve had an arthropod, but on checking, it’s only been since the end of last month – it’s just been a while since I’ve done a session revolving around one. Not much of one either, but the subject presented itself.

I’d gone into the bathroom and, as I was washing my hands, something flew/dropped read more

Visibly different, part 51


Our opening image today comes from 2003, and is only the second frame in my Arthropods folders – all seven of them (at present count.) Since I limit the folders to about 4,000 images for convenience, I’ll let you do the math, but I just started the seventh a month or so ago so don’t aim too high. But this is also the first of the extreme macro images, read more

The 25 year journey of the Sigma 28-105


I mention using this lens from time to time, and I’ve gone into detail here and there, but it deserves another look, especially as we come up on its 25th birthday, more or less.

When I bought my first ‘serious,’ new camera, the Canon Elan IIe, back in 1997, I picked a pair of lenses to go along with it, using my income tax refund for the previous year. The primary lens was the Sigma read more

Visibly different, part 4


The date of the above shot is unknown it’s a slide, and I know where it was shot but not when. For some reason this slide has no date stamp, though others, from what I believe was the same trip, do, so I’m going with that: August 2006. Down by a boathouse on Hyco Lake in northern NC, these guys were everywhere, read more

Friday cuteness

Two specimens for you today, both within a couple of meters of the front door – I’m spoiled.

Last night while checking out Walkabout Estates for various nocturnal critters, I came across a diurnal one instead, which made it a lot easier to actually get the shots I was after. This one was camped out on the big Japanese maple right by the door.


Unless you’ve never read more

More mouths to feed

Luckily, I’m not the one to do it.


I was busy with other tasks this morning and neglected to do my morning check of the mantis egg sacs, but judging from how many were swarming around when I finally did notice this one, they’d probably gotten started in the very early morning hours. Only a couple were still displaying a slight forehead bump that’s the last read more

Some quick closeups

Last night I did another check at the nearby pond, not just seeing how active the treefrogs were, but also looking for other, aquatic subjects. They weren’t hard to find, but my first surprised me a little.


This is a juvenile painted turtle (Chrysemys picta,) and unless I miss my guess, it’s this year’s brood, judging from the lack of ridges on the scutes read more

For the time being

What, exactly, does that phrase mean? I mean, we all know how it’s used, but how was it coined? Being what? Can time be anything else? Do we want to know how ‘idiom’ got its name?

Anyway, the point is, I’m going to be a little busy and I don’t know what I’ll be able to produce for a little while, so I’m throwing down (actually, I’m tossing diagonally) read more

On this date 15


Way back in the shady mists of time, called by some, “2013,” we have this image of an unidentified red ant species. Age has ravaged my memory now, so I cannot recall the exact circumstances, but there’s this nagging suspicion that the nights had been fairly cold when I turned over a rock in the morning and revealed a colony of rather large red ants read more

Closer than last year

… or the previous one, for that matter.

I’d mentioned earlier that I’d primed the yard with egg cases of the Chinese mantis (Tenodera sinensis) – seven of them, to be exact – and this morning I found the first of them had produced progeny. Unfortunately, read more

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