In honor of number eleven and its obvious connection to the movie This is Spinal Tap, we have this bright portrait of an ambush bug, genus Phymata, because… well… actually, I can’t make any connection between them at all. Nevertheless, it is a colorful insect, and much the same might be said for the characters in that movie so, hey, maybe I can make a connection after all!
Ambush
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
I am making progress on various projects, which is good, but it means posting is slow, and since you’re reading this I can apologize to you. Some of these projects should produce things of potential interest a little later on, so there’s also that, right?
Anyway, I got out yesterday with the extraordinary Al Bugg to check
I guess I’m not shocking anyone when I say this is not how I intended this image to look at all. And it’s a shame, because it was a rare opportunity that might actually have come out with some artistic merit. I know, right?
The scene opens on a casual photo competition on this thing that used to exist called, ‘Usenet,’ that somehow died in favor of chatrooms (pretty much the
I had completely forgotten what this flower was, and just spent way too much time trying to find out. Which is funny, because I have a ton of photos of it, including one in the header images, but my image database is not up to date. Anyway, it’s a Mirabilis jalapa, more often known as a four-o-clock flower – one I specifically planted in order to attract hummingbirds
Or, kinda chartreuse.
It is that season here in NC, when the wretched longneedle pines are shamelessly engaging in an arboristic orgy. Dissatisfied as they are with the rather gauche and needy technique of relying on pollinators like bees and butterflies, pines instead fling their emissions wantonly throughout the air, firmly believing in the concept of quantity over quality. If you fire enough rounds,
If you’re thinking these are just more pics left over from the previous post, you’re wrong! (Boy, I enjoy that way too much.) Instead, we had another electrical storm roll in right around sunset, mostly well to the south, when the sky was still too light to do time exposures. I had considered trying for more shots once the sky got dark enough, but the front
I was just about to go to bed when I heard the soft rumbling, and went outside to note the flashes in the sky, from all directions that could be called, “west.” I came back in and pulled up this lovely site I stumbled across, a real-time lightning map. From that, I could see the bulk of activity was west-southwest
Not too long ago, I picked up a simple USB microscope, primarily to see if it could be used to capture insect behavior. There has been no opportunity to try that out yet, though I suspect with the extremely short depth of field, my selection of subject matter is going to be rather narrow.
In the interim, however, I thought I’d check out how it worked on the Triops, restrained as they
After my failed attempt to hatch them late last year, I purchased a packet of eggs online and tried again a few days ago, this time actually producing several examples of Triops – click on that link for more basic info. I have been told this is a Triops newberryi, a less-common
