Let’s play catchup


By about this time in the past few years, I would have posted roughly four thousand mantis pictures. I am definitely behind those numbers this year, so let’s see if we can rectify that.

To begin with, I was super-prepared this spring, having ordered a bunch of Chinese mantis (Tenodera sinensis) egg cases – called “oothecas” if you want to get technical or simply confuse read more

Why’s it so herony?


I went back to one of my old haunts a short time back, meeting with a student that lived nearby, and arrived a little early, so I poked around a bit because it’s very professional getting soaked in sweat when you’re about to meet with someone new, you know? Let them see you at your worst, and everything afterward will always be better. I usually don’t brush my teeth either.

Anyway, read more

Per the ancient lore, part 17


This week we’re back in the Beach folder, but what we’re doing here and how we might escape, no one can tell. What can be told is where this was taken, because like damn near the rest of the Ancient Lore pics so far, it was taken at my wading area on the Indian River Lagoon (hey, don’t give me shit – an awful lot of my arthropod photos in the past read more

How to become way too self-conscious

I am going to disappoint legions of people doing a websearch on that topic, hoping to develop their neurotic tendencies better, because this is going to apply only to a specific subset of people, but then again so does everything I post here.

I had mentioned earlier both my weird-ass schedule and the fact that the backyard pond was hosting several hatchings of tadpoles, and one of my regrets is that, read more

It’s not coming together yet

I have finally gotten a veritable buttload of pics to post, but unfortunately, cannot do so just yet. Between work and student schedules, various tasks around the house and in the office, and sinuses that are wreaking havoc, I can’t sit down long enough to do a post justice, much less a couple or three of them.

I know what you’re saying: “Jeez, Al, work from a read more

On the heels of June

… comes an abstract, of course.


June was a pretty lean month for me, photo-wise, and my choice for abstracts was minimal. What we’re seeing here is the first flower blossoms from one of my pond plants, known as a lizard’s tail (Saururus cernuus.) The plants had gone in a couple of years ago and always did well, but this year they surpassed themselves, making read more

Per the ancient lore, part 16


As I type this first draft, I have just submitted this image to BugGuide.net for identification, since my initial searches turned up nothing I have the stopwatch going on my desk right now to see how long it takes before someone replies.

This is, naturally, from the Arthropods folder – actually, the first of six (so far,) because I limit the contents of the folders to around 4,000 images to read more

Podcast: Macro video, part one I suspect

I wanted to do this one entirely as a video, but the video clips that I had to work with ended up being too short (or, I guess you could say, I was once again too long-winded) to match up audio and video. So it’s both, a podcast covering the main details and a video to illustrate what I was talking about. I’ll get better at this soon. Maybe.

So let’s start with the audio.

read more

Per the ancient lore, part 15


It’s been a while since we’ve seen any crustaceans – let’s feature some crabs today.

Okay, sorry, I’m not in a rut, this is just one of the earlier images that still held some interest. We’re once again back in the Aquatic folder, on Day Two of the loaner camera and once again shooting in the little saltwater aquarium that I maintained while in Florida. Two of read more

1 131 132 133 134 135 214