Out the other night in the yard looking for photo subjects, I found a curious bit of drama. A female reddish brown stag beetle (that’s the actual common name, scientifically named Lucanus capreolus) had gotten herself caught in a corner web and was dangling, unable to get a foothold on anything to draw herself free. Stag beetles are among the largest US beetles, certainly the most
Category: Nature
So, spiders
And so, we rejoin our hero in his further adventures of spider encounters and arachnophobia…
When I did the detailed portraits of a largish wolf spider (family Lycosidae) a few days back, I released it under the porch steps and vowed to keep an eye open. Accommodatingly, the spider assisted
Not spiders
You know, if I’m telling you in the title that spiders will not be found in this post, that only means some following post is not going to be good for arachnophobes…
Since the move, I’ve been taking the opportunity on occasion to scope out the new area, trying to determine what kind of decent shooting locales can be found nearby. One stroke of luck is a large pond, close and easy
The long-awaited mantis update
Posting is still slow – I’m finding a lot of my time taken up with other things, boring things from a blogging perspective – but I’m trying to keep up with images at the same time. There will be another post featuring various arthropods coming shortly, but for now I’m going to focus on just one.
One of the many mantises that had inhabited the Japanese maple has now switched
It’s just to illustrate, honest
A few posts back I talked about a cool lens effect, where defocusing a subject far enough could make it virtually disappear. Yesterday, I captured an image that illustrates it even better. That’s really the whole purpose of this post. It’s not to creep people out or anything.
Your
The depths of your eyes
Yeah, that title’s fairly similar to a post from about a year ago, but the difference is significant. That one was about a fly with a maze-like pattern in its eyes (thus, “lost,” get it?) while this one really does involve depth. I spend hours on these titles…
Anyone who’s had a close enough encounter with a praying mantis knows about the false pupil, even if they haven’t
Blogging wasn’t in the cards
For anyone, should they actually exist, who has been stopping by and not finding any new posts, I apologize. On occasion, circumstances inhibit sitting down and working on posts, and this particular occasion was a move. We are now in a new house!
I take no credit for this whatsoever it was all The Girlfriend’s accomplishment. Well, okay, that sounds like I didn’t even
I’m a dude
I had to wash off some things outside a short while ago, and while draining the hose, I set the sprayer for ‘mist’ and applied a liberal coating to grasses where I knew some of the praying mantises lived I was rewarded with seeing one of them scamper up and begin drinking deeply from the water droplets adhering to the leaves. Of course, I trotted (it might have been
Not deep
I’m still here, and still largely busy – it’s going to be a lean posting month, but I’ll still try to put something up from time to time.
[“From time to time” – isn’t that a stupid phrase? Who makes these things up, and did they have any think what word good is?]
A few days back we received torrential rain, which is not to say this is any more remarkable
Spoke too soon
Looking at the nest box only minutes ago, and it appeared the parents were still trying to feed their nonexistent young, and so I decided to see if the snake was still present. There was a small surprise waiting therein.
Go back down and look at that other image. Do you see any hint of this guy in there? Yeah, me neither, through multiple frames too. But it did explain why