Category: Insects

Sorry Katy, You Ugly

I’ve been hitting you with an unhealthy dose of bird posts as of late … and for that I’m not sorry – ha.  Just kidding, I know there are loyal readers out there that prefer the non-aviary topics (and I know that from all the hate mail I get when their tolerance is crested).  The good news is I have tried to remedy that with a quick post on … wait for it… something that doesn’t have feathers.
Shield-Backed Katydid shot in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park back in July 2014

Something tells met some of you may have just taken a few steps back from the monitor just then.  I cannot lie, I am having to force myself to stay at the keyboard just to get through this post.  This bug basically looks straight out of a horror movie and it creeps me out staring just at the picture.  It took incredible willpower to stand there in person looking at it through the camera eyepiece.  Guessing you are wondering what this thing is and will not settle for the answer “It’s a bug!”.  Scouring the Internet (a fancy and technically deceiving phrase for basically going straight to Google), I came up empty.  By the way, just in case you get an inkling to do some Google oogling under the phrase “creepy looking bug” – DO NOT DO IT – you will not be able to go outside for a month!  Luckily,  my brother Ron had better luck and was able to successfully identify “the bug”.  This ladies and gentlemen is referred to as a  Shield-Backed Katydid. Coincidentally, that happens to be Latin for “creepy ass bug”.
Shield-Backed Katydid shot in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park back in July 2014

This specimen was found while chasing waterfalls in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  We were out there in July 2014 on our way to North Carolina.  Unable to remember the name of the actual waterfall Linda wanted to shoot, but if recalling correctly it was not that far from their extremely impressive visitor center. Do not pass checking that out if you are in the area.  While Linda dials in her silky waterfall shots, I’m generally exploring the area for birds (not a stretch there) and if that comes up empty, I transition to dragonflies, then bugs (then cool fungi if you are curious).  There are zero birds in the Smokies and the dragons were nowhere to be found.  Simply looked down at the railing (don’t tell Linda, but right behind where she was standing) this Katydid was hanging out likely annoyed we were disturbing its hunting grounds.  Sorry for the limited shots… was it mentioned earlier this bug creeps me out!?!

A quick fact before I leave you.  The Shield-Backed Katydid were given their moniker for the enlarged dorsal area of the prothorax (apparently also called a pronotum)  which extends down to the abdomen.  All I got for you tonight, hope you enjoyed the post.

Unwarranted Concern

Sorry everyone, it has been an extremely busy month so far and time keeps getting away from me – a lot of that due to running.  I was able to log a 13 mile run today in a very hilly course, so I’m feeling comfortable about my upcoming Toughest Illinois’ 15K race.  The good news on the blog front is I am once again within the 2 year queue window having processes a number of shoots including a run to Starved Rock and another to Kentucky – yes, they include new bird plus ones that are excited about their upcoming blog debut.

Thought I would throw out a quick one tonight just to get the ball rolling for the month.

Snowberry Clearwing shot at Jubilee College State Park in August of 2014

I should probably mention now that I have a pretty significant aversion to bees and hornets.  On the bees front I used to experience significant swelling when I was a young kid whenever a bee would decide to sink its stinger in my tender flesh.  Now that I am older I get a little less anxious around them when they are roaming around SOLO – get ground bees congested in a dirt hole and this dude starts looking for implements of mass annihilation.  Mowed over a nest last year and several played a game of darts on my behalf.  On the Bumblebee front I usually just let them be (see what I did there hehehe) having never met an aggressive one in the field – usually they are too drunk on nectar to care about me.  However, there is one type of large hornet or wasp that used to terrorized our summer Wiffle Ball field.  I have yet to fully ID it, but it was at least 2 inches long, banded with black and yellow with a stinger that would bring some serious tears to a young boy’s eyes.  When I saw this creature through my camera it immediately triggered a flight reaction

Snowberry Clearwing shot at Jubilee College State Park in August of 2014

Could this be the terror of my youth!?!  Concern quickly turned to intrigue and forced myself to try and get some additional shots.  It was big – maybe in the 1 inch body size with a 1.5-2 inch wingspan.  Definitely the right color palette, but something seemed a bit off.  Those wings are much more robust than the standard Bee or Wasp wing and I do not remember either have a furry butt.  Then I saw this image in the digital dark room.

Snowberry Clearwing shot at Jubilee College State Park in August of 2014

That image left me with the impression it was more of a Butterfly than a Bee or Wasp.  Time to hit Google and figure out what this mystery guest was.  From a region perspective, this was found at Jubilee State Park back in August 2014.  Using that information with a smattering of the visual characteristics eventually revealed the answer to the mystery – as best I can tell, this is a Clearwing – likely of type Snowberry.  My fears were unwarranted, for this is a harmless member of the Moth family.  I hope that isn’t what we raged war on as a kid, but I distinctly remember getting stung by one so either we allowed ourselves to exaggerate too much and it was really a hornet or that villain is yet to be properly identified.  The good news is I’ll be able to recognize the Clearwing from this point forward and let myself enjoy the moment rather than fight the flight urge.

Hope you enjoyed this new Moth for the blog – see you again real soon.

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My What Green Eyes You Have

Welcome to April everyone!  Bonus time is now replaced with monthly quota time so I get to start the trek to 6 posts once again.  Figured I could at least get one out of the way seeing as how I’m just sitting here trying to recover from a difficult training run this morning – first of the young season two loop pass through the hills of Springdale for a healthy 13 miles (also took the second loop in reverse to make sure the legs were totally drained by the end).  I also know my brother Ron is out trying to add to his bird count right now so opted for a devious subject
Praying Mantis shot at house October 2014

I know for a fact that Ron is not fond of the Praying Mantis based on his decision to wait an extra month to turn the page on our EddieSoft Gallery calendar so he could skip looking at the one we selected for our annual product.  You can view the previous featured post on the Mantis back in Sept 2010 (link here).  Note, the Mantis shot from that first set added a blue ribbon to our collection (link here).  Hoping that after viewing this new set he might be in enough trauma that he will prefer to stay inside rather than risk a personal encounter – ha.

Praying Mantis shot at house October 2014

Hit the jump to see a few more creepy pictures!

Continue reading My What Green Eyes You Have

Bee My Valentines

While out on a training run (that’s right Ron, not a “practice” run) I came up with a clever title for a post.  This may seem odd to a non-runner, but trust me, when out on a long run you are looking for ANYTHING to keep your mind off of the fact you are actually on a long run.  The enjoyment of being out in nature – hearing the song birds encourage you along the way coupled with seeing animals frolicking about the woods can only keep you distracted for so long.  Eventually your muscles break through that nature bliss and remind you … well, that you are on a long run.  At those times, I try to concentrate on what’s on tap for the next post.  Now that I had the clever title, I sifted through my image queue and found an appropriate set…
Bee on flower taken at Biltmore Estate July 2014
… and then I forgot to write up the post in order to publish on the appropriate day – total failure.  All that cleverness left in shambles gasping for air on the floor of the digital darkroom.  Finally decided to swallow my pride and go ahead and finish this post 9 days late – sigh.  Now don’t get to lenient on me, these Bee shots were taken all the way back in July 2014.  So technically I’m like 3 Valentine’s celebrations late but let’s call it a rounding error.  I decided to exercise some strategic cropping on these shots thanks to some less than ideal lighting conditions.  That Bee you see above… well, it was a little farther away in the original shot.
Bee on flower taken at Biltmore Estate July 2014
Hit the jump to see a couple more pictures of this busy Bee

Continue reading Bee My Valentines

The Red Dragons

Welcome back everyone!  Still busy as hell around her at LifeIntrigued.  I have a half marathon race tomorrow in a creepy cemetery, Halloween is just around the corner and my basement is “finish me” shaming me every time I go down there.  Luckily almost all the materials have arrived to finish out the trim in the basement, so hoping to get through most of that this weekend barring any issues with the run tomorrow night.  Making some progress on the decorations but still a lot to do there .. not likely to get to everything I was hoping to have done, but it should be another good display with what appears to be in my means.  Of course, if that isn’t enough, I have blog quota demands to deal with as well – so far those have not been writing themselves, so let’s get to today’s feature.
Red Dragonflies from August 2013

When it comes to Dragonflies, they really do not get much cooler looking that the one above.  Well, except for the one below, but we’ll get to that in a second.  Decided it was time to get this post out there.  I’ve been sitting on these red dragons for a while now.  It occurred to me that they themed well together because they are both Dragons, and well… they both feature the color red – albeit the one above is more of an orange than a red.  One thing about them is they were shot in completely different locations.  The one above I believe is called a Flame Skimmer.  As with all posts on this site, corrections, confirmations, complaints are always welcome in the comments.  This particular Flame was located at Red Rocks Canyon near Las Vegas Nevada.  There have been a number of posts for this particular site on this blog due to its huge diversity in photography options.  Linda enjoys taking shots of the gorgeous red hues in the rock terrain and I spend my times hunting for anything that moves on the ground, in the air and guessing water if they actually had any water there.  I mention the latter because ironically, this particular dragonfly prefers hanging out near water supplies such as hot spring out in the Southwest.  Note as a unique trait, the Flamer doesn’t actually seek out prey.  They basically hang out around the house waiting for the food delivery guy to pull up and hand them dinner.  A good life if you can get it I guess.

Red Dragonfly from International Crane Foundation - July 2013

The dragon above has to be my favorite so far.  The deep red body accentuated by the orange tinted wings and the gorgeous red pattern on the lower abs and tail.  Going off of images my brother Ron sent me and some quick searches on the internet, this appears to be a Red Saddlebag.  The only thing that leaves a bit of question on that is this one has a very distinct red pattern on the back.  The reference images I see have a much  more blotchy red coloring – what do you think?

Hit the jump to see a couple more shots

Continue reading The Red Dragons

Fragile Wings

Why don’t we just put a put a bow on this non-bird month.  Just sitting here taking a quick break to recover from my morning run.  As you know if you read this blog, just sitting around doing nothing isn’t one of my favorite things to do – seems wasteful when there’s so many pictures in the queue!  How about we sit here and recover from my morning run while cranking out a post – ahhh, much better.

Today we feature a creature that has a similar characteristic with birds.. albeit a much more fragile version.
Butterfly Set

That’s right, today we are featuring butterflies.  This generally means one thing to me – outings where I didn’t find any birds, dragonflies or frogs.  That is usually my progression out in the field.  After that you get spiders, insects and last resort a worm.  This particular butterfly is called an Orange Sulphur and was shot in Champaign IL.

Butterfly Set

Hit the jump to see a couple more butterfly specimens!

Continue reading Fragile Wings

Mile High Dragons

Howdy everyone!  Seems like it has been ages since my last post, but that is likely due to the extra high output over the last couple of months leading up to the last post.  One of the reasons for the delay was taking some time to work up another non-birding post – kind of a theme this month and figured I would keep it going at least one more post.  Not sure how much longer I can hold out on the birds though, developing a horrible twitch from the withdrawal hehehe.

Dragonfly at Denver Botanical Gardens May 2015

The good news is my brother and I were able to bird last Saturday up at Chain O’ Lakes State Park.  We took a 6 hour hike starting at 9am and then caught an hour or so after catching a bite to eat.  Unfortunately, it was pretty damn cold out with the temps dropping down to 23 the night before with a healthy dose of snow and sleet to accompany us on the drive up.  On the positive side, we had a dry day with plenty of sunshine that brought out a lot of birds for us to shoot.  I’ll catch you up on the day’s tin loading at another time but it is highly likely there was at least a +1 for each of us that day – Yeah!

Dragonfly at Denver Botanical Gardens May 2015

Hit the jump to read the rest of the post!

Continue reading Mile High Dragons

Bugging Out

And now for something complete different.  Thought it was time to switch it up a little on the Blog and probably more of a driver to finally get a collection from the small world out of my queue.  This is one of those posts that makes me cringe through the entire process.  First, taking the actual picture puts you waaaay to close to these creatures.  Second, processing them forces you to zoom even closer into the shots to check crispiness and worst of all, researching what it is we are staring out gives me a serious case of the heebee jeebees.  Taking that lead.. here’s a bee
Small World

An immediate confession is needed here.  I suck at identifying insects and arachnids so be forewarned, I’m going to leave you hanging on some of these but most of the time I should be able to get you close.  In this particular situation close means I can identify the subject as a member of the bee family, but much more than that would be a stretch.  If threatened with waterboarding I’d take a guess that it is a Common Eastern Bubble Bee based on numerous reference shots.  On the learning side, that beige blob on the hind leg of the bee is called a Pollen Basket where the Bee places pollen grains (who’d a thought) in for the trip back to the hive.

Next up one I probably owe a HUGE apology to.   I believe this is a Big Dipper Firefly or more commonly referred to in my neck of the woods, the Lightening Bug.

Small World

The Insect Identification website (link here) makes a point to mention how harmless these creatures are and how you should never put them in a jar because it stresses them.  The good news I didn’t STRESS them by putting them in a jar.  Nope I basically slaughtered them by the thousands when I was growing with a yellow wiffleball bat.  Literally thousands if not millions.  Midwest kids are generally damn good baseball hitters for what I believe is due to the bioluminescence of these bugs — err more correctly “beetles” posses.  Every Summer night we were out in the dark smacking the hell out of them with our bats (or tennis racquets if that happens to be your sport) in order to watch the chemical light show splatter into the darkness from a well place swing.  If you can nail a lightening bug in the dark you can hit a giant baseball with ease.

Small World

I can still remember putting the bat away at the end of the night and it still glowing brightly from the night’s home runs.  It may not have been eco-friendly but it kept us from planning more devious activities.

Hit the jump to see bunch more insects collected since my last bug post.

Continue reading Bugging Out

Project: The Rise of Thanatos

I’m back with another new addition to the Halloween Haunted Trail!  Surprised I can still function after writing the last post on a Killer Clown shudder (link here).  While I was on the subject of Halloween decorations figured it made sense to go ahead and post about the other decoration that consumed all my spare time leading up to our party.  I have to give Pinterest a little bit of credit on this one since someone had pinned a picture of a Grim Reaper decoration.  There wasn’t any instructions with it and it really appeared to be more of a professional prop than a DIY.  That picture sparked an idea of creating something similarly themed.

2014 Halloween Decoration - Grim Reaper

What do you think?  I basically leveraged some of the clown structure ideas but the bulk of the frame was a lot simpler.  Linda slipped a bit on standards for her decoration night shots and ended up clipping the right eye on although it does look pretty sinister – just know that it does indeed have two glowing eyes.  It is also pretty tall – forgot to measure it before I put it away, but it is up there!

2014 Halloween Decoration - Grim Reaper

Like last time, hit the jump if you want to see how this was designed and constructed

Continue reading Project: The Rise of Thanatos

That’s No Bat

Today was a momentous occasion of sorts.  On the morning schedule was a long run as I’m in the final month of training for the upcoming IVS Half Marathon.  There was a little bit of apprehension  due to the planned distance – 11 miles.  Normally that wouldn’t be too daunting, but this distance holds new meaning for me now – this is the distance covered the day I received a cold trip to the emergency room (link here).  Since that day, the most I’ve subjected myself to was 9 miles.  Based on the weeks left before raceday, it was now time to pass that hurdle.  As you can tell by the creation of this post, that distance is once again MINE.  Truth be told it was pretty cool at the start (but it definitely warmed up at the end) and the last two miles were a bit of a struggle, but none the less, it’s 11 miles in the book.  Only two more miles to go to the required distance and barring any unforeseen issues that should not be a problem!  To celebrate, thought I’d crank out a quick post.  The good news is I’ve now completed processing all the shoots up to January ’13 so there is plenty of fodder for the blog – the bad news is I’ve now ONLY completed all the shoots up to January ’13.  You just might be getting some bonus entries in the coming months and thinking at the moment I’ll be jumping ahead to some recent shoots because I really want to show you some of those as soon as possible.  Until then I give you this!

This was actually a print submitted for the UB competition (link here) and ended up taking a blue ribbon in the insect category.  Surprisingly, I didn’t find any Butterflies in a quick search of this blog. I could have sworn I’ve featured these beautiful creatures before, especially since these are my third go-to subjects when out in the field – first birds, then dragonflies and then off to find some flowers in hopes of capturing some colorful prints to hang on the wall.  I may have to go back and search again – still can’t believe there hasn’t been in previous postings .. sigh.

These particular shots were taken at Jubilee Park while testing out a borrowed 70-200 2.8 VR glass.  We were trying to decide if we wanted to upgrade from our older model workhorse.  Based on the results from this set we ended up doing just that!

Hit the jump to find out what kind of Butterfly this is (maybe) and see some additional shots

Continue reading That’s No Bat