Visibly different, part 21


For our opening image this week, we have a female southern black widow (Latrodectus mactans,) the first that I’d seen. It dates from 1991, and was found in a rock cleft on a trail that I frequented – getting her out was a challenge, because widows are shy and prefer concealment, and of course I was endeavoring not to get bitten. Credit to the species, though, read more

Motherhood

Well, there is a mother and babies involved, but in exactly what way, I cannot determine – no matter which, it’s definitely creepy to our human perspective.

Out the other night by the neighborhood pond with a headlamp, tracking down a calling frog, I found a black shape on the trunk of a tree that, on close inspection, turned out to be a very large spider.


It wasn’t 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

Too cool, part 35: A modicum of success


The praying mantids have been an ongoing saga on this blog now for several years, and if you want to call it an obsession, no argument from me. While I am definitely motivated to capture sequences and behavior of any species that I can, I happen to like mantids, and I’ve had the opportunities to bear close witness to them. So here we are again.

Not having found any distinctive evidence of local read more