They don’t even do that anymore, do they? Actually, we have a grandfather clock out in the living room that runs the old-fashioned way, weights and pendulum and ticking and all that, and it remains pretty close to atomic time after I spent two weeks adjusting the length of the pendulum rod. Okay, that’s not hard, but it has to be done in small increments and then observed for
Tag: Tenodera sinensis
The whip of guilt
July has been a slow posting month, for several reasons – the heat, mostly, and getting deeply involved in video editing. But I’ve also just – not felt like posting. Perhaps it’s good that I didn’t, because the mood might have come through and you wouldn’t have the scintillating content that you normally do.
But I’m getting over all that, so let’s see
A bit more useful
Feeling bad about not illustrating scale very well a few posts back, I revisited the same subjects (well, two of the three) to do a better job. And got a bonus as well.
This still remains kind of a pain in the ass, however – closeup video at night has a lot of issues, and the 7D really isn’t optimized for this. But it’ll be a long time (e.g., significant income) before
Only kind of useful
Two discoveries last night led me to shoot some comparison images, which allows you to see the size variations between these species, but not the actual size of them. It’s not easy to get something to show size in the frame with most of my subjects, even when I carry little paper measuring scales with me (how many people can say they have one of those in their wallets regularly?
Visibly different, part 23
Our opening image today, a Chinese mantis (Tenodera sinensis,) comes from… I’m going to say 1990, a few months after having moved to NC from NY. I know it was taken with the Wittnauer Challenger (which produces rounded edges on the negative frames,) and was early, so no later than 1991. Long enough ago, anyway. This was most likely as close as I could get with
Been quiet
Curiously, the activity around Walkabout Estates has been greatly reduced, and I haven’t been shooting much – we’ll see what happens for tomorrow’s outing. Right now I just have a handful of images from today’s patrol.
The gardenias out back have been budding madly, threatening a prominent display when they eventually come into bloom, but it’s
Some night, anyway
I was initially going to say these were from last night, but it’s getting late and some idiot decided the date should change at midnight rather than, say, seven AM. Whatever – they were shot at night, and obviously not right now. Good enough.
While I’m still leery of the temperature dropping to something inexcusable again, it’s been warm even overnight, and so scoping out
Visibly different, part 13
So this one is cheating slightly, which you’ll understand in a moment.
Many years back, my first digital camera was the Canon Pro 90 IS, a more touristy model than serious, partially because that’s all that I was going to spend at the time, partially because I was still wedded to slide film. But after shooting quite a few images with it, I noticed something a little curious, and ran a
Early to the party
Yesterday, The Girlfriend and I were checking out the progress of various plants in the yard when I glanced down at one of the rosemary bushes and stopped dead. This particular bush had a little extra alongside, one of the Chinese mantis (Tenodera sinensis) egg sacs/oothecas that I’d collected less
Looking back on those we post in 2021
Okay, was that a particularly terrible title? I dunno, it had that certain cliché-trashing aspect to it…
Anyway, a look back at posts and photos from last year that I’m fond of, which you should definitely consider fair warning, because you’re not getting any others. There will be a couple more posts of a similar nature coming, one of them the annual tag roundup, so this will have