You might remember the above image from a post earlier this year. It came from April, when several newly-hatched praying mantises, probably Chinese mantises (Tenodera aridifolia sinensis) were found to be inhabiting the azalea bushes that flanked our porch. I was, of course, delighted,
Category: Nature
Friends in low places
So, here’s the story: I was out just a few minutes ago chasing a crab spider, because the lack of ambient light meant I could observe its actions without it being spooked by my looming presence. A macro flashlight mounted on the camera allowed me to see what was going on, focus decently, and so on – the spider would only see the rather erratic sun bouncing around.
The light, however,
That time of year
I had started this post a little earlier, and then realized that it was referring back to a post from almost exactly a year ago, so I delayed it to make it line up. Humans do stupid things like that ;-)
Once again this year, the inchworm stage of the wavy-lined emerald moth (Synchlora aerata) has made its appearance on the flowers in the yard, and when I say “appearance,” I mean
I’m tasty
I just had to upload this one, partially to break up two posts that are far too similar. But this is me doing my “Snow White” thing while setting up some shots the other day. A butterfly (I can’t be bothered to determine the species) alighted on my left bicep and stayed there for no small amount of time, tapping its way down my arm with its proboscis. While I suspect
One plant
On the same day that I snagged the eentsy frog seen here, I collected a significant number of other pics (of course.) There might even be another forthcoming post out of the one-hour casual trip, but right now, I’m going to concentrate on just one plant. Not one plant species, but one solitary
All right, am I redeemed slightly?
I recall apologizing for posting so many little creepies, and promised to try and find something cute, but that never did come to pass, did it? I simply wasn’t ever running across anything cute – I think I’ve glimpsed a rabbit in the past few months, and when the bluebirds hatched, they bailed the nest and the yard in a matter of hours. Anyway, a trip to the park today may have
Busy busy
I started this year with the strong consideration that I was going to increase the number of posts I’d been making, which is always a bad idea – I am, of course, far behind where I was last year at this time. It doesn’t help that the site upgrades that I’d tackled became the resizing of nearly every image, cleaning up the stray code that html editors leave behind, altering
Composition, part 5.1
Part five-point-one? Aren’t we up to fourteen now? Well, yes, but part five needed revisiting. Okay, it didn’t need it, and to be frank, it’s probably one of those things that will be debated for a long time – but here’s my attempt to reduce this as much as I might by introducing a pertinent factor. As you no doubt recall, Composition Part 5 was about
Fringe benefits
While it is hot enough out there today to actually make the grass disturbingly warm, and potting soil seem to have been heated on a stove, there is still a small benefit to chasing frantic pollinators on spearmint flowers: you get to inhale the wonderful mint aroma.
Some small black & white wasps could be seen, in close approach, to have distinctively chartreuse eyes, but were disinclined to
Back to the beginning
Since I had some business in Raleigh yesterday, I decided afterwards to go back to one of my old haunts, the head of the Neuse River where it spills from Falls Lake. I haven’t been back there in a while, but years ago when I started getting serious about photography, it was one of my routine shooting locations, probably helped by it being 11 kilometers (7 miles) away from where I lived at