Back on the evening of March 1st, the weather was remarkably warm, and walking around with a bright flashlight held near my eyes revealed numerous arachnids taking immediate advantage of the conditions. Well, to some extent, anyway – there wasn’t much activity to be
Tag: wolf spider
Well, hello there
Not too long after the various Chinese mantids around the yard molted into adulthood, they dispersed in various directions. I actually watched the rose bush resident fly off one evening, quite possibly to be immediately snagged by a bat – I saw something happen out of the corner of
The different signs of spring
Sure, spring means flowers and new foliage and all that, but it also means a lot of other things too, ones never covered by any media outlet that exists. Here’s a look at the creepier signs of spring.
As The Girlfriend and I were coming in the back door yesterday, I spotted a flash of movement on the deck railing, which turned out to be a newly-hatched praying mantis. Now, I have a mantis egg
You can hide, but you can’t run
Actually, you can run if you want, and you may, because the image above is the least icky – it’s all downhill from here. You should know I don’t say that lightly…
What you’re seeing here is the larva of a green lacewing fly, family Chrysopidae, bearing the typical camouflage for this time of year, which is a nice coat of lichen – the background surface
Scattershots
Just a handful of recent images, incorporating both ‘found’ and ‘planned’ photos – nothing deep to be found here. Above and below, a grey treefrog (either Hyla versicolor or Hyla chrysoscelis) was found squatting in one of the bluebird boxes one midday, to my surprise in a position that provided the full view of the autumn sun, now
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
It’s just to illustrate, honest
A few posts back I talked about a cool lens effect, where defocusing a subject far enough could make it virtually disappear. Yesterday, I captured an image that illustrates it even better. That’s really the whole purpose of this post. It’s not to creep people out or anything.
Your
Friends in low places
So, here’s the story: I was out just a few minutes ago chasing a crab spider, because the lack of ambient light meant I could observe its actions without it being spooked by my looming presence. A macro flashlight mounted on the camera allowed me to see what was going on, focus decently, and so on – the spider would only see the rather erratic sun bouncing around.
The light, however,
What do nature photographers do at night?
I bet you’ve asked yourself that dozens of times, haven’t you? Admit it. Well, the answer is, “Pretty much the same thing other people do.” Now that I’ve resolved that burning issue for you, you can remember me in your will.
But, from the more egocentric universe of this blog, on occasion, nature photographers (meaning me) venture out and try to find things not visible