Wait, we’re one short!


I had said earlier that, after an auspicious start, I thought I could do a post for every day of October, and had intended to post this one yesterday, so the month end abstract would bring us up to the full 31 posts this morning. Alas, the day at work yesterday was horrendous, running quite late, and I was exhausted and actually in pain when I got home late yesterday afternoon, read more

Mason Farm 2: Arachnidy


We now return to Mason Farm Biological Reserve, only not really because all these photos were taken during one visit that’s already days past now, so all we’re doing is seeing more photos – vacation slides from your creepy neighbor. And as the name implies (well, outright announces,) it’s gonna be spider heavy.

Part of this is because, late in the season and with chilly nights, read more

Accomplishments and not

Tallying up the posts and uploaded images for the month of September, I find that not only did I set a record for the year-to-date for images posted (127,) but it would only take seven more to beat the total for any year that I’ve been posting: last year was the record-holder with 747, and I am presently at 741… with six images lined up to be included in this read more

It’s been… one week

I just love planting earworms like that.


But it really has been a week since the outing that I am about to relate, and the delay is partially due to a lack of free time, and partially due to wanting to clear some older photos from the blog folder first, which I did – there are six posts between now and read more

The secret yet eludes me

Still working through the backlog of photos, but part of the reason for stalling on these was that I was trying to produce the next chapter in the story, even going so far as to make another examination tonight before I started working on this post, to no avail.


You see, I’m trying to document the entire life cycle of a praying mantis, birth to death and everything in between, read more

I like these bushes


If you have the faintest interest in doing arthropod photography, you could do a lot worse than getting yourself a butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii) or three. They’re readily available most anywhere, come in a variety of colors, and most importantly, have a very long blossoming season while attracting a significant breadth of insects, as well as hummingbirds on occasion. read more

Always with the drama


As the Chinese mantises have been molting into final instar, which means reproducing adult phase, they have abandoned the plants with smaller leaves and hiding spots, relinquishing them to the smaller, later developing Carolina mantises (Stagmomantis carolina.) And of course, among the prime choices for these are the butterfly bushes (Buddleia davidii,) which produce read more

Here and… well, here

Continuing the posting of recent-ish photos (meaning those mostly taken while I was hashing out my ignorance of PHP to make things look ‘acceptable,’) we have these various offerings from the environs immediately surrounding Walkabout Studios, what the proletariat tend to refer to as the “front and back yards” we will attempt to elevate this missive by using, read more

Brevity, let’s see, brevity…

You and I both know I’m not too familiar with the concept, but we’ll make the attempt, okay?

Anyway, I have a buttload of photos that I’d like to feature before I even get to the beach trip, but not enough time to do detailed posts about them, so I’ll toss down some brief descriptions and possibly send the rest over to the Latest Images page. Sound like a plan?


I read more

Let’s play catchup


By about this time in the past few years, I would have posted roughly four thousand mantis pictures. I am definitely behind those numbers this year, so let’s see if we can rectify that.

To begin with, I was super-prepared this spring, having ordered a bunch of Chinese mantis (Tenodera sinensis) egg cases – called “oothecas” if you want to get technical or simply confuse read more

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