I was down in Walkabout Studios a short while ago…
[A brief explanation, because now’s the time to do it: the new house came with a finished basement room, partially below grade, that even has an outside door, and I immediately snagged this as my office/studio/lab/workshop/makerspace, because it’s largely sound isolated and has windows for ventilation and because
This is one that I’m faintly frustrated at only having captured once. First featured 9 years ago but actually taken 14 years back, it looked to me like a cross between a lacewing and a praying mantis – which is largely what it is. It’s a member of the Mantispidae, or mantisflies, possibly a green mantisfly (Zeugomantispa minuta.) While the praying
After my nostril pics of the red-shouldered hawk, The Girlfriend went out to do some shopping, scaring the two hawks off from the light pole when the car started (it’s not that loud, honest.) Upon her return, as she was unloading the groceries from the car, she caught motion over her left shoulder as something passed and crashed into the bush right alongside the front door. As she turned to
Yesterday, I looked out front to find the female red-shouldered hawk (Buteo lineatus) actually sitting on the post lamp that illuminates the front walk (well, when it’s dark, and the light is on – the sun handles it most times.) This sits about six meters from the front door. Naturally, she flew off before I could get the camera and try to decide which window would provide the
I said earlier that I had a few new thoughts about chaos theory, and so we delve back into this mess, but at least I’m giving you fair warning.
We refer back to The Forces of Chance article by Brian Klaas, and he uses the example of how the Secretary
While adding the image for this post, I searched on “northern” within the image title, and only two came up that were not northern water snakes – this one, and the polar vortex on Saturn (not my shot.) Now, if I search in the tags, I get 14 hits on
I was sorting images a few hours back, which often results in finding a few more pics to post, and indeed did moreover, it falls in line with the ‘Just Once’ topic, since it was featured earlier this year.
That’s a yellow-bellied sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius,) snagged while out chasing wood ducks the other day, on a tree right alongside the pond –
So, a presently ongoing saga. A couple of weeks ago I heard an odd call while out on the back deck of Walkabout Estates Plus, overlooking the pond – I didn’t recognize it but thought it seemed familiar. Then, on a hunch, I got out the binoculars and began scanning the area, and confirmed my suspicion: out in a secondary pool some distance off, I could see some wood ducks
In crossing the yard the other day, I saw movement in a bare-ish patch of lawn, immediately recognizing it as a ground skink – I pounced, managed (after a couple of tries) to get it into my hand, then had to endeavor not to let it slip between my fingers. But this gave me the chance to do a few studio pics.
Mimicking their natural habitat isn’t hard, since they like leaf
We’re just a tad late, but not too much, and so we’ll see November out on its own (but always welcome to visit, as long as it’s not overnight) with the month-end abstracts. And this month, we have two (urk!) smutphone examples, because that’s what I had in hand at the times.
Nice textures, but probably not too confusing or mysterious. We were transplanting