Let’s take a herpetology break

Because you know we’ll be back to the arthropods soon enough…

All of these, by the way, came from the NC Botanical Gardens, just not on the same day. There are reptiles and amphibians to be found elsewhere of course, but the conditions in the gardens are pretty welcoming to them, and they have enough human contact to be less shy than normal.


On a fence where they’re read more

It’s official


… even if it’s nonsense for the most part. Today marks the first day of “spring,” as I am the very first to inform you of because of course you start your day right here. Most people associate spring with flowers and pollinators and trees in bud and birds nests and all that, of which we are slowly seeing the signs of here, just not today, which is read more

Defying the rain

The nice thing about going long periods without rain is that scheduling photo outings isn’t difficult – provided you can cope with the heat. The recent rains have changed this quite a bit, and I’ve had to switch several student appointments around due to cruddy weather. This past Saturday, we watched the weather reports on practically an hourly basis and chanced a botanical garden read more

Making up


I did almost no shooting this week, but made up for it a little on Saturday when I had two students, though all of these images came from the second session. This month will be a new record for images uploaded, mostly because of this post, but there may still be more.

The opening image is a monarch butterfly caterpillar (Danaus plexippus,) the first I think I’ve seen around here, and read more

Monday color 7


[These posts are usually lined up well ahead of time, so this one was completely written when I got the images in this post, which might actually be the same individual – they were taken not three meters apart.]

One of the images taken back on this day last October – I elected not to use it then. read more

It’s coming


I’m not putting a lot of faith into this, considering the fluctuations of weather we’re already prone to here, plus the wildly unorthodox winter last year, but the first signs of spring are visible, and I’m lucky enough to have students who want to take advantage of it. Yesterday, the weather was fantastic but I didn’t get the chance to do anything about read more

Beans & burritos, part one

You may well ask, what, exactly, is that title supposed to mean? Well, it refers to the idea that I don’t really do artsy stuff, so this must be fartsy stuff instead. Basically, just throwing down a bunch of recent photos for the sake of it – not everything has to have exposition.

This little guy might be the same green anole (Anolis carolinensis) seen in read more

Second Best of 2012

I separate my images into broad categories to help locate them when needed, with some refinements into sub-categories as necessary. So when working on my “Best of 2012” posts, I decided to use these categories (with the exception of the previous post.) As mentioned earlier, two categories read more

Amateur naturalism, part three


Our next topic in the series is reptiles – you can also refer back to the posts about insects and birds if you like.

Reptiles (and amphibians, which I’ll also refer to here but will use the same term for each just for convenience) are perhaps the most misunderstood of animal classes, which is unfortunate because they’re actually pretty cool. They become more prevalent with warmer read more

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