That makes the scorpions and rattlesnakes sad.
A carpenter bee on a sunflower
In 2004, my family and I vacationed in Kauai for a few weeks and in that short period of time grew accustomed to seeing geckos running all over the damned place - walls, ceilings, etc. It was just a thing. When we returned to our home in San Jose, we thought for about a minute that the geckos had followed us, but then realized that we had aquired some unexpected house guests while abroad. A bunch of Zoropsis spinimana, as it turned out later, had apparently moved in and were hanging out on walls. They resemble wolf spiders but that’s pretty much where the similarity ends (they were not aggressive – timid, in fact). But we couldn’t be sure of that, and I contacted the Department of Entomology at the California Academy of Sciences. Dude wrote me back a few days later and said:
Hi,
Your question about spiders was forwarded to me. Although I can not be sure of what you have without seeing specimens, it is possible that the spider is a Zoropsis. This is a large primitive wolf spider recently introduced into the SF Bay Area. Attached is a page with some images with additional information. If you wish confirmation, you may send us a specimen (live in a small plastic vial in padded envelope is ok) to [redacted].
So I bottled one up and mailed it. Later:
Your spider just arrived and it is indeed a Zoropsis. Am sending you more info on it. This species has become established in the Santa Clara valley over the past several years. Neat spider; nothing to fear.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! No.
It’s funny how there is literally nothing to fear from such a tiny, harmless thing. And yet we do.
Hey I saw Krull before I saw Charlotte’s Web, so there’s no hope you could convince me of that.
Recently went to the Lake District and managed to snap some of these with my LG G3. Phone cameras never cease to amaze me. Some of these benefit from viewing at full-size!
This was a very dozy bumble bee so I was able to make sure I got some excellent shots:
And here’s one with what looks like very full pollen armbands.
This little fella was a slow mover but damn, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a dung beetle over here before. He wasn’t doing a very good job with the dung though. “Anoplotrupes stercorosus”.
Not seen this many daddy longlegs in one place for a while but they’re such strange little critters. There was a fifth one crawling around out of shot. Apparently, they’re not spiders either.
Wow, I was saving for a 56mm camera, but you might have just sold me my first Android phone : the quality of those pictures is just amazing, and what vivid colours!
Speaking of which, that sunflower picture was incredible, @Timex.
Since I can’t fight on the quality front, I’ll venture into the conceptual:
Some spider playing the squid on her invisible web, over a rice field. Probably a Tetragnatha praedonia.
The colours are quite natural on mine compared to my girlfriend’s ZTE Axon 7 Mini which produces slightly saturated pics. Still, it’s a three going on four year old camera phone now so I daren’t think how good newer models are. I will say that focusing on things so small automatically can be a bit hit or miss but I still manage to produce some great pics.
Funny you should post up a picture of that spider, I was about to post one myself. My girlfriend took this (she also loves bugs). This fella’ lives on our washing line, probably with friends:
They are almost squid-like!
Here’s a brief and clear summary by Robin Wong of a macro setup for photographing insects:
He gets lovely results using a handheld flash with a diffuser to soften the light.
Also, this feels like the beginning of a cheesy 80s horror movie. And it happened in Australia, because of course it did.
I hope someday I reach those kind of levels. Meanwhile, I try to make up for my lack of material and skill by staying in a spot and waiting for the insect to get in range of my camera! Thrilling afternoons.
Insect Macro Photography is physically challenging
Oh so true. Strained my left thigh in the most awkward fall on my back the other day, trying to get the right angle on a silly spider without ruining its web and scaring it off. Ten days of walking pain for this:
Wished I had had both his flashing material and technique for this one!
I went to a Winery in the countryside today, and was greeted with an Australian redback bringer of death, which narrowly escaped my camera, as if it smelled I was pulling it out!
It was insect madness, but I was pretty bad at capturing anything, excepting this “ridiculously photogenic”, as Penny_Dreadful would put it, dragonfly whom I made friend with.
Near an old house, I also came across some chanting bullfrogs (probably American?), which I wanted to capture to share with Jeff, but they became silent the moment I started recording, of course.
So here is the daily aural mayhem of the Japanese summer, starring at least a bunch of different species of cicadae parasiting themselves and melting into one big audio blur!
This is worth a read, from a spider scientist who curated the excellent @realscientists Twitter account for a week.
Beautiful dragonfly, Lefty! I love those light hairs behind his head.
We should look at spiders in awe, rather than in fear.
Yep! They are pretty awesome creatures. :)
What a nice article.
The Brown Recluse paranoia almost travelled back from America to France some years ago: they were going nuts in the news with “beware, danger spider is coming to northern France because of climate change!”. Happily, that wonderful piece of extreme journalims didn’t find much echo through the population, and thus was quickly relinquished, since it wouldn’t improve sales or something.
I had no idea the phenomenon originated in the United States, and was running wild amongst the medical personnel there.
I wish I was any good with Dragonflies: I have spent quite some time going through the MCQ trees of my books, but can’t pinpoint what precise species it is. I was hoping those hairs would have helped me but they didn’t!
Speaking of troubles identifying…
What is that hybrid of a moth and a fly?
Looks a lot like a horse fly, but they don’t normally have the long antennae.
Whoa.