Just to let you know, this is going to be a long post, mostly because of the number of vertical-format images, and there’s a good chance that you’re going to wear out the scroll wheel on your mouse (because you wouldn’t be so gauche as to surf this site on your smutphone or tablet of course.) This probably isn’t the best time to tell you that I’ve picked up a new sponsor
Tag: molting
Milking the day
I’ve made two mentions of it now, but on a particular day last week I really and truly got out and did a little shooting – not anywhere near enough to make up for the poor showing in the first quarter of the year, but more than, say, nothing. And then the following morning I got some more, with both days contributing to the recent
Of course of course of course of course
Poking around in the yard late last, I was silently lamenting the fact that the mantises (as well as nearly all other critters of interest) seemed to have moved on – it’s been days since I’ve seen any sign of them, but I’m not at all surprised, because the hot and dry weather has been taking its toll on the plants and so the favored lairs of the mantids are not very impressive
What the night holds
Spring is being a little tease this year, flirting with us for a few days before mock-coyly disappearing, leaving us with her ugly sister Near-Freezing Temperature, who doesn’t even have a good personality. From time to time the conditions seem like the good shooting season has finally arrived, but I’ve been stung often enough that I don’t really believe it anymore
Just because, part 20
I have a handful of pics from a recent outing to post, and while this one came from the same outing, it is notably different from the others and kinda “out of theme,” but I liked it too much to let it go. This is a red-bellied water snake (Nerodia erythrogaster,) a good-sized specimen, basking in the morning sunlight at Mason Farm Biological Reserve. Now that
Too cool, part 28: Wholly molty!
Seriously, I really need to stop doing titles like that…
This is going to be the longest post on the blog. Not in terms of words, but in terms of images, since I am going to show a long sequence from the other evening, and they’re nearly all vertical format, so the linear dimensions of the post are going to be exceptional. This may result in some gaps between text blocks, so please excuse
Let’s check back with the mantids
Gosh, it’s been, what, six whole hours since I’ve posted anything about the resident mantids? I cannot apologize enough – I know how you must feel.
Okay, it’s been a bit longer than that, and in fact, this first image was taken nine days ago and not posted then. [See what I did there? I prefaced with hyperbole and followed with a contrasting statement, and now another
Coughing up a lung
Once again courtesy of Not Exactly Rocket Science comes an article about a rather bizarre (to us at least) factor in the process of arthropod molting: apparently, they also shed the lining of their lungs while they’re at it.
Now, this is a little bit different from what we might imagine (yeah, like discarding your entire skin at once to emerge bigger is nothing odd.) Insects – and arachnids,
So, spiders
And so, we rejoin our hero in his further adventures of spider encounters and arachnophobia…
When I did the detailed portraits of a largish wolf spider (family Lycosidae) a few days back, I released it under the porch steps and vowed to keep an eye open. Accommodatingly, the spider assisted
I’m gonna git you, sucker
A couple of years ago, I captured a particular sequence of images that didn’t quite cut it, as far as I was concerned, and I’ve been trying to get a better set ever since. This evening, I was successful.
What you see to the left is a mosquito in larval stage. Mosquitoes lay their eggs in the water, usually a still pool for a particular reason we will eventually get to. They hatch out