Let’s have some mants

Even more of the backlog of photos that I have, trying to clear them out as I add still more to the stack.

On two non-successive night, I found a few mantids, which is about as many as I saw in total last year. Okay, there were probably more for last year, but not a lot – this location isn’t as liked by the mantids as the old place, as evidenced by ‘Chinese mantis’ being the read more

Estate Find XXXVI.V

We have a late Find entry, which I’m rushing out to make it still within the confines of Friday (I have a half hour.)


After watching the hatching taking place many moons ago, I saw no signs of any Chinese mantids (Tenodera sinensis) at all, except for the adult that suddenly read more

Still here, really

These long empty stretches keep happening, and probably will, since there are plenty of other things going on here that need my attention, so the posts get neglected. Plus, those same things keep me from finding new images or topics. So, we’ll have just a couple of sideline pics gathered here and there just to prove I’m not dead. But also consider, I could be resorting to AI to generate read more

Night of 1,000 lizards

Well, okay, not quite that many – more like half a dozen.

For the past couple of nights I’ve noticed that the three small transplanted Japanese maples out back each have their own bebby Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) living thereon, mostly visible when they’re sleeping draped across the leaves. One we’ve read more

Palate cleanser

These are the most recent images, taken late last night, because we needed a buffer between posts of too-similar images, and I don’t feel like using the raindrops-on-roses pic right now (they’re coming, Julie Andrews.) Plus, I was a little surprised by two of these, anyway.


I’m trying to remember if I’ve seen this species twice this season, or only once. Regardless, read more

Handful of night

Found a couple of subjects while poking around tonight, but only had very short periods of time to capture them, which I’ll explain in a moment. So this is what you get.

First off, I found that the spiny assassin (genus Sinea,) still occupying the basil plant, was polishing off a meal which looked a little odd, so I quickly went inside and got the reversed Sigma 28-105 and the flash read more

Only kind of useful

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? read more

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 read more

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 read more

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 read more

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