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
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
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
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
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
When you live in the northern reaches of the US, the “first sign of spring” is usually considered the American robin, or perhaps certain flowers – not daffodils, since they often came up just to get dumped on by snow. Here at the mid latitudes, we can see robins throughout January, and a few flower species can appear in February. So for my own sake, there’s one appearance
I actually took all of these photos before I shot the fossil rock for the previous post, but I intentionally posted them in this order to break things up a bit. It probably doesn’t help, but I get credit for the effort, right?
After the heavy rains Monday night and Tuesday morning, I went out to do a walk-through of the yard, and one of the first things I noticed was what you see here, a leaf
After yesterday’s monsoon (which was hard enough for us to be watching for the signs of tornados,) there remains a fair amount of standing water in various places, and the yard is nothing more than a sponge right now. In a shallow pan this morning, I spotted a couple of spiders hanging out, one obviously a species of fishing spider. I pointed the largest out to The Girlfriend.
“Can he
First off, even if you don’t like spiders, you really need to check out this video, an extremely well done collection of jumping spider behaviors. This comes courtesy of The Dragonfly Woman. Even though I’m embedding it here, I encourage you to go