Living in the past XXIII


Yeah, another spider, but seriously, this was going to come up because it’s my favorite spider portrait. So far, anyway. Listen, I know that “favorite spider portrait” is a phrase that most people maintain really shouldn’t exist, but if you’re gonna do it, you might as well take a little pride in it sometimes, right? And to my warped brain and I, this read more

Living in the past XV


Another from 2014, I always liked this direct portrait of a minuscule crab spider (genus Mecaphesa) – I went back to the original post to find that she measured 6mm across the legs in this position, which doesn’t make her a whole lot bigger than a tick.

Then I looked at the date, which was familiar, and thought, Is this the last arthropod photo that I took at the old place? Because read more

That kind of day


Today is the summer solstice, the longest period of daylight in the calendar year, as well as World Humanist Day – but I’m not posting about either of these (or much of anything, really.) It’s been raining for two days straight, which we’ve needed, which is a horribly adult thing to say – pathetic all around. But this means I’ve done very little read more

Visibly different, part 42

This is not going to be the most popular set of photos on the web this week. You have been warned.

One particular facet of spiders is how the eye pattern can be used to identify different Families, which can help pin down species, but by itself, it illustrates how much variation is visible within the arachnids, and read more

The clock is humming

They don’t even do that anymore, do they? Actually, we have a grandfather clock out in the living room that runs the old-fashioned way, weights and pendulum and ticking and all that, and it remains pretty close to atomic time after I spent two weeks adjusting the length of the pendulum rod. Okay, that’s not hard, but it has to be done in small increments and then observed for read more

Been quiet

Curiously, the activity around Walkabout Estates has been greatly reduced, and I haven’t been shooting much – we’ll see what happens for tomorrow’s outing. Right now I just have a handful of images from today’s patrol.


The gardenias out back have been budding madly, threatening a prominent display when they eventually come into bloom, but it’s read more

Some night, anyway

I was initially going to say these were from last night, but it’s getting late and some idiot decided the date should change at midnight rather than, say, seven AM. Whatever – they were shot at night, and obviously not right now. Good enough.

While I’m still leery of the temperature dropping to something inexcusable again, it’s been warm even overnight, and so scoping out read more

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 read more

On this date 44

Three weeks ago, I speculated that the choices for the On This Date posts were getting thinner because the shooting season slows down in the fall and winter, which is true – but not damn yet. I shot a lot on October 28th for various years.

You scoff? We start with 2012, as the end of the world loomed.


This is the first of the bug-n-purple pics for today, an unidentified crab read more

On this date 35


On this date in 2012, I was… I don’t remember where I was, to be honest, but I was taking photos of… I don’t know what these are. I just happened to like this little patch of white wildflowers, and I think it was off the back of the property at the old place – other photos from that date indicate that I was home that day, anyway.

But you know? This date in my personal read more

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