{"id":34011,"date":"2023-03-18T14:18:48","date_gmt":"2023-03-18T18:18:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=34011"},"modified":"2023-03-18T14:18:48","modified_gmt":"2023-03-18T18:18:48","slug":"alas-not-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2023\/03\/alas-not-this-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Alas, not this year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Zefrank is back with his Animal Awards (actually I&#8217;m not sure this isn&#8217;t the first, but <em>he<\/em> still returned, from wherever he goes when he&#8217;s not actively posting videos, and we&#8217;re torturing idioms now I believe,) and while I didn&#8217;t win the award for &#8220;Nature Photographer I Want To Party With,&#8221; I have to respect his choice. So without any standup monologue to drag things out (besides this, I mean,) we have the latest vid<strong>:<\/strong><\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align:center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"750\" height=\"422\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IJzWVtHqspM\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><br clear=\"all\"\/>Now, you <em>are<\/em> on a blog, which means it&#8217;s perfectly okay to redirect attention back to the owner &#8211; expected, even &#8211; and who would I be if I shirked that responsibility? Someone else, most likely, probably someone with a life and much less ego. But while watching that, I not only recognized the peculiar trait of the sharpshooter leafhoppers, I recognized a previous capture that had never been identified.<\/p>\n<p>This ended up taking more than 90 minutes. I wasn&#8217;t sure if I&#8217;d featured the image on the blog before, but I was fairly certain that it had been prepped for web display at least. Thus I was searching the blog folders as well as the &#8216;Archive&#8217; folder used for larger versions, and even into the main stock folders when those were coming up empty. Well, certainly not <em>empty<\/em>, but devoid of the image in question wherever I was looking, anyway. The original image would certainly reside in stock but could still be ridiculously time-consuming, since the Arthropod folders alone contain over 24,000 images, and the one in question wouldn&#8217;t be cropped tighter so the subject might be quite small in the frame. It did not help that I was misremembering (old, you know) the approximate time period in which it had been shot. But eventually it was run to ground and is now presented here. All that, for a literally shitty bug<strong>:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/DaShit.jpg\" alt=\"possible Chrysomelidae larva encased in feces\" width=\"750\" height=\"727\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-34012\" \/><br clear=\"all\"\/>I know what you&#8217;re thinking<strong>:<\/strong> &#8220;Boy, what kind of weirdo photographs bug shit?&#8221; but know that it was <em>moving<\/em> when I spotted it, so there was reason to believe it was more than bug shit. Asshole.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, this would appear to be in the Family <em>Chrysomelidae<\/em>, probably Sub-Family <em>Cryptocephalinae<\/em>, the case-bearing leaf beetles. It <em>almost<\/em> appears to be bearing both other arthropods and perhaps eggs, which is possible I guess &#8211; the original image at full resolution still isn&#8217;t conclusive, and that&#8217;s now <em>more<\/em> time devoted to this singular image. <em>Sheesh<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the sharpshooter thing was <a href=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2013\/07\/frustrations-part-11\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">covered some time back<\/a>, but began long before that when I spotted a leafhopper in the NC Botanical Garden that appeared to have an anti-collision light. No, seriously, the millisecond appearance of the droplet at the hind end was catching more light than I believed possible in the shadowed conditions, and it was <em>flashing<\/em>. Just a trick of the light, unless some of the plants in the garden are more radioactive than normal. Yes, they have banana plants in there, but no, this wasn&#8217;t on any of them &#8211; good thinking, though.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/weearc.jpg\" alt=\"time-exposure of broad-headed sharpshooters Oncometopia orbona flinging excrement\" width=\"730\" height=\"495\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12228\" \/><br clear=\"all\"\/>Those efforts were almost a decade ago, and I&#8217;ve been meaning to tackle them again to see if I could improve on the results, especially given that I can do video now. Unfortunately, even though my motivation is peaked at the moment, the sharpshooters won&#8217;t appear for a few months yet. And don&#8217;t think you&#8217;re clever by suggesting I get some practice in anyway, because I already thought of that, and am knocking down the tea as I type. Be sure to check back!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zefrank is back with his Animal Awards (actually I&#8217;m not sure this isn&#8217;t the first, but he still returned, from wherever he goes when he&#8217;s not actively posting videos, and we&#8217;re torturing idioms now I believe,) and while I didn&#8217;t win the award for &#8220;Nature Photographer I Want To Party With,&#8221; I have to respect [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4,3,3809],"tags":[1842,7147,7145,7146,7144,1843,7143,1882,7142,2322],"class_list":["post-34011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","category-nature","category-photo","category-video","tag-broad-headed-sharpshooter","tag-case-bearing-leaf-beetle","tag-chrysomelidae","tag-cryptocephalinae","tag-neochlamisus","tag-oncometopia-orbona","tag-pygmy-yeti","tag-sharpshooter","tag-true-facts-animal-awards-best-worst-jumping-and-more","tag-zefrank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34011","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=34011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34011\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}