{"id":11276,"date":"2013-04-18T20:38:10","date_gmt":"2013-04-19T00:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=11276"},"modified":"2013-04-18T20:38:10","modified_gmt":"2013-04-19T00:38:10","slug":"dont-mess-with-a-nature-photographer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2013\/04\/dont-mess-with-a-nature-photographer\/","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t mess with a nature photographer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just had to post this.<\/p>\n<p>I came in this evening from being outside shirtless, horrifying the neighbors, and felt something walking on my chest. Looked down and found a little winged aphid &#8211; just the perfect size, to my way of thinking. Grasping it by the wings and scampering outside, I carefully placed it on the azalea bush in front of one of the newborn mantises. This was touchy &#8211; they&#8217;re still very shy, but I was rewarded by seeing the mantis&#8217; head snap around and fixate on the location of the aphid<strong>;<\/strong> I quickly dashed inside and got the camera. Once back outside, I played god (loki, perhaps &#8211; I&#8217;ve always liked loki) and nudged the aphid around from its hiding place on the back side of the leaf, and that was all it took.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/TFA-1.jpg\" alt=\"TFA-1\" width=\"730\" height=\"487\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-11277\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/TFA-1.jpg 730w, https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/TFA-1-400x266.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 730px) 100vw, 730px\" \/><br clear=\"all\"\/>Yes, there&#8217;s a part of me that feels I shouldn&#8217;t interfere, but then again, I&#8217;m interfering just by looming close for the images, and I&#8217;m getting some benefit from this, so why shouldn&#8217;t my photo subjects? This is the primary attrition time for insects &#8211; they&#8217;re at their most vulnerable at this size, and most of them will die within the next few weeks. Plus, I just mowed the lawn, and who knows how many critters I wiped out? I can go on justifying this if necessary&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/TFA-2.jpg\" alt=\"TFA-2\" width=\"730\" height=\"518\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-11280\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/TFA-2.jpg 730w, https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/TFA-2-400x283.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 730px) 100vw, 730px\" \/><br clear=\"all\"\/>Besides, you don&#8217;t walk on me without my permission &#8211; let this serve as warning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just had to post this. I came in this evening from being outside shirtless, horrifying the neighbors, and felt something walking on my chest. Looked down and found a little winged aphid &#8211; just the perfect size, to my way of thinking. Grasping it by the wings and scampering outside, I carefully placed it on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[1734],"class_list":["post-11276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-photo","tag-to-all-blog-reading-aphids"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11276\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}