The Magic Bucket doesn’t differentiate

The other night I checked out the waste can outside the door to Walkabout Studios, otherwise known as the Magic Bucket of Variety (the can, not the studios,) to find that it had snagged yet another capture. This one was a small-ish wolf spider (Genus Lycosidae) and I noticed as I tipped it out that it looked a little odd. A closer inspection told me why, and once again I got the camera in hand.


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Some other night

I don’t know, I think this was three nights ago, I just didn’t post it then. But while doing something else in the yard, I went past a dog fennel plant that was starting to get a little tall and found this:


Now, “a little tall” is relative to the surrounding grasses, which weren’t topping 20cm, but this was a bit less than a meter in height, and far read more

A few more whittled off

Just clearing out a couple more photos from the backlog where I can. These were from the other night, while I was poking around with the headlamp, as is my wont. I’m quite used to seeing the bright blue ‘stars’ from the lawn that signify spider eyes reflecting the light, but the location of this one drew me in closer, since it was on the wall of the house. The odd appearance of read more

Not waiting another week

I could have shelved this one for another Estate Find, but that’s a week away and I think I should keep you in the loop.

I had a feeling this was looming, yet did my check a little too late in the day to catch anything in progress – still, we have this.


That’s the egg case/ootheca of a Chinese mantis (Tenodera sinensis) that we saw in an earlier, read more

Could this be Al?

It’s been almost a week without anything but my routine weekly post, and for that, I apologize – it’s been a bit busy here, and while I obtained some frames here and there, I never got around to doing anything with them. Today, however, is Prove That You’re Not Dead Day, so it seemed as good a time as any to get them up here. Or for someone to produce a post read more

Tripod holes 39


N 25°56’36.64″ W 81°28’12.33″ Google Earth location

There was no question that this one was going to enter the lineup, and I purposefully stalled it to appear today, within two days of its 24th anniversary. This is on slide film so I only have the date developed, but I remember this trip fairly well and know I was further north on this date, because reasons – read more

Out of proportion

Boy howdy, peanut-brittle and sausages, do some of these posts take way more time than they really should! But I’ll go into that later. Right now, we have a simple (!) follow-up on the anole front.

After finding the adult Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) snoozing in the oak-leaf hydrangea in the previous post, I’ve been keeping an eye on that particular lizard, because it’s read more

Tried to slip one past, eh?

As usual, I had several egg cases of praying mantids to keep an eye on around the yard this spring: one Chinese mantis, two that I suspected were European mantis brought down from NY, and three Carolina mantis. One of the Carolina’s vanished over the winter, perhaps found by mice or something (this was before I’d mounted them on new stalks to keep them out of reach of read more

Visibly different, part 49


This image comes from 2011, when I happened upon the egg sac/ootheca of a Chinese mantis (Tenodera sinensis) sporting the newly-hatched young in a local park. The darkness of their eyes, I was later to determine, showed that they’d hatched out within the past several hours, and their proximity to the egg sac indicated that it was probably within the past 3 or so. read more

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