Living in the past XXII


My timing was both good and bad for this one. I’d seen a jumping spider wandering around on one of the potted plants on our back deck earlier, without thinking too much of it, but I was familiar enough with their appearance that when I came out a few hours later and found one of the leaves rolled up tightly, I knew it had just happened peeking down the still-open read more

Do you know this spider?

Just a brief video clip here, that I captured while after other subjects back in September – I didn’t take any still photos and the spider was in view for only a minute, so this is all I have to identify it.

My own search through BugGuide’s photos turned up nothing that looked like a good match, and I haven’t tried contacting them to find out if there’s a way to show 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

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

Profiles of Nature 15


This week we shout out, “Hi!” from a safe distance to Gwendolyn – not because of any fear on her part or ours, but because she has wicked hay fever and this is as close as she’s coming to the outside air during this time of year you’d be the same way if a single pollen grain was damn near the size of your nostril. Gwendolyn is a bikini read more

On this date 33

We’re cheating a little here, but I said to myself, Why upload images that are identical to ones already uploaded? Which I’ve said a few times in the past, digging through the blog media library, but in this case, I’m sending you to a page in the main site gallery, because this black racer was taken on this date in 2008.

We go a little fartsy for 2011, with a tiny jumping spider read more

Broken record


No, not a world record, or even a personal one – indeed, no kind of superlative at all just about the opposite. I’m referring instead to something that will soon disappear from our vocabulary, the idea of a skipping vinyl LP playing the same damn bit over and over. Because the posts are yet/still thinner than I’d like, and than I intend, but I read more

Getting back to abnormal


For the past few weeks, I have had little time to chase arthropod pics, and even less time to blog about it, but I’m able to catch up a little now. Some of these images are from before that busy time, and some are ‘current.’

I haven’t been keeping up with the mantises as I did last year, but that’s partially because only two are able to be found dependably. Above, one read more

A tiny bit of diversity



The hatched Chinese mantises (Tenodera sinensis) that I posted about earlier – and near-perpetually on this blog, really – have spread out across the front yard to some fairly remote locations remote, at least, for something that measures 10mm in body length. Above, one stalks among the leaves of a creeping jenny plant, while at left read more

A closer look

Just a few pics from yesterday morning not long after sunrise, poking around in the yard looking for subjects. While I had initially modified a 80mm macro lens from my Mamiya medium format camera to work on Canon bodies when my Sigma lens failed, I have maintained the use of it because it’s one damn sharp lens, despite the fact that both focus and aperture must be manually controlled. I cut read more

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