Two discoveries last night led me to shoot some comparison images, which allows you to see the size variations between these species, but not the actual size of them. It’s not easy to get something to show size in the frame with most of my subjects, even when I carry little paper measuring scales with me (how many people can say they have one of those in their wallets regularly?
Tag: Carolina mantis
A smattering
Had an outing the other day which wasn’t terribly productive, though it did net a handful of useful images. More importantly, it didn’t feature one treefrog in the least! So you get a little break here.
Can’t say the same about mantids, though,,,
A Carolina mantis (Stagmomantis carolina,) ready to lay down a badass ootheca track, was spotted in the morning
So, so long ago
Well, okay, two days ago. I could have posted these sooner but my hands were trapped under my ass and I couldn’t type. Anyway, I did a brief circuit of the neighborhood pond just to see what was happening, which wasn’t much. A great blue heron and a great egret both remained quite distant, spooky, and elusive of decent photos, probably jealous of my eagle exploits in New York. Most other
Running behind
Still not keeping up with the post count, and I feel absolutely awful, I’m here to tell you (okay, no I don’t, just slightly contrite, but not so much that a shrug can’t dismiss it.) And the subjects haven’t improved, though I did make a couple of attempts at something a little different, with no success as yet. But here’s another scale comparison, because
Convenience
That’s what I’ve been trying to accomplish: convenience. I mean sure, it’s great to see all sorts of exotic critters by getting abused by the airlines, staying in crappy accommodations, and spending large amounts of money, but there’s a lot to be said about stepping barely outside your doors to find subjects to photograph. Granted, they’re mostly all
I did
Meaning, I did go back out to see how things looked after the rain, as I closed the previous post with. However, since these are displayed in reverse order, newest first, this post appears above that one and well away from that simple statement, ruining the continuity and requiring all this explanation. Plus there’s no sense of building drama or developing photo accomplishments, unless
Not even a day
Man, I didn’t even have the ‘Sort’ folders cleaned out for an entire 24 hours before I had to add to them again. Not that this is a problem – I can quit anytime I like…
Last night, I was poking around the yard a little by the light of the headlamp and ran across a couple of subjects worthy of getting the camera for, and so I did, crazy and unpredictable person that I
Squeezing one in
I thought I might get a few last photos up from the NY trips, but then when out in the yard watering plants, I saw some potential video opportunities. Some of these clips have been attempted before and never panned out, but this time luck was with me.
Note: The voiceovers are off the cuff (obviously,) but this also means that I can occasionally forget something, like the fact that
Oh that’s sneaky
So as I said last year, I was endeavoring to photograph a Chinese mantis creating an egg sac, or ootheca, and never managed it. Actually, in all my years of chasing hexapods, I’ve done it just once – one lousy frame. Last fall, I had a likely candidate
Wait, we’re one short!
I had said earlier that, after an auspicious start, I thought I could do a post for every day of October, and had intended to post this one yesterday, so the month end abstract would bring us up to the full 31 posts this morning. Alas, the day at work yesterday was horrendous, running quite late, and I was exhausted and actually in pain when I got home late yesterday afternoon,
