Some close-ups of the most common local beetles. Probably the wrong species labelled, as you tell them apart from the motif near their butt, which I didn’t care to capture - I didn’t know back then!
They are very easy to take pictures of, because totally blind.
This also means you need to be careful when they come out, around spring, as they are not too small (about 3~4 cms), and they fly with some speed, oblivious to anything. You get hit regularly by them, and you can feel it.
When they clutch onto your finger, while it is only physics at work, I find the experience strangely moving.
I had found a princess spider last month in a park near Osaka’s university hospital, and I was glad to find her nearly at the same spot today. I had brought my camera this time, but there was wind and other spiders whose webs I didn’t want to disturb, so no real close up.
So they are releasing these little “air potato beetles” in my area to fight the air potato infestation, and they are definitely doing their thing, here is one on another type of plant, which it’s not eating, thankfully.
And here is a spider we found in the garden we let get completely overgrown with potato and Spanish Needle. I almost died taking this picture so I hope you appreciate it.
Sorry for the poor quality, but this is an extremely rainy day.
They are Japan’s biggest crickets (the females are easily over 3 cm long), yet they sing the most beautiful chant.
He gave us 3 couples. Getting eggs or their larvae to survive is quite difficult in his experience, but will try at it nonetheless!
That caterpillar :O
The moth it becomes seems like quite a sight too; what vibrant colours.
We moved to our new place 2 days ago, the top storey of our building in Tokyo. I was hanging out the wash on the balconey outside of our bedroom. I had carelessly left the window protection net open for a minute to get my laundry. Big mistake! Back into the room, I was greeted by a Japanese giant Hornet queen.
I don’t have the guts to take the picture of the beast, even from afar - I promptly closed the room’s slides, and spied on it waiting for 5 minutes to get back through the way it went in -, especially in the dangerous Autumn season, so here is a link to a guy with balls about the size of my head : http://s2014no64.at.webry.info/201404/article_35.html
