Continuing the theme, we have a look at the monochromatically-challenged bugs also found on Saturday’s outing.
Had I been inclined, I could have rushed to post this yesterday, since it was National Honey Bee Day, and this is indeed a European honeybee (Apis mellifera.) This was taken on that day, at least, but we’ve already had a holiday for August,
I just love planting earworms like that.
But it really has been a week since the outing that I am about to relate, and the delay is partially due to a lack of free time, and partially due to wanting to clear some older photos from the blog folder first, which I did – there are six posts between now and
This one is reasonably appropriate for the time, because we have entered the season where we often hit the dewpoint not long after nightfall, and NC humidity means this isn’t halfhearted at all. Not to mention that, as I type this early yesterday morning, I am about to go out to see if the sunrise is worth pursuing.
For this photo (from, surprise surprise, the Arthropods folder,) I was out
Of course, with the replacement of a small stack of bound pages with kitten pictures on our walls and the practice of crossing out the incorrect date on our checks (neither of which actually occurs anymore,) it is time to examine the previous twelve months and try to figure out what went wrong, just so we can feel better about what the next twelve months might hold. And since I’m
Once again, I observe that the posts are thin, which is a shame because I am/was well on the way to a record in number of posts, having already passed the total for both 2014 and 2012 (not combined, mind you.) A lot of that had to do with Monday color, which I’ll leave it up to you whether that should be considered cheating or not. But at best, they added five photos per month to the number
This post serves a double purpose, both to show off a handful of recent photos and serve as a buffer before another gout of mantis pics comes crashing in. As even further warning of that upcoming post, a lot of them are going to be really weird looking.
Yesterday morning, I watched a pair of green herons (Butorides virescens) at the nearby pond. The image above is probably the best I got,
This is the follow-up to several different posts made earlier in the year – it gives an indication not just of what life in the arthropod world is like, but how I pursue nature photography as well.
Since the beginning of the year, there have been five areas of the front yard that served as “photo subject preserves,” areas where I could frequently find something to photograph. Early
After finishing that previous post, I just went out to survey the yard for other subjects and checked on the Argiope. The encased male was missing from the web already, curiously, but while I was looking to see if his carcass had been discarded underneath, found a male conspicuously at the edge of the web again.
Now I’m confused. Another suitor already making his move even
I know, even more arthropods, but that’s how it goes.
I’ve been keeping an eye on an Argiope spider in the dog fennel plants, probably a juvenile A. aurantia, sometimes known as a black-and-yellow argiope, or garden spider. These are the ones that grow fairly large, up to 8cm or more in leg spread, that throw orb webs with a white zigzag in the center across tall weeds