A small, red beetle crawled up an apple leaf. At the edge, what should he do?
What's Next? - Summer 2010
What would you do, were you a small, red bug? Fly off into the wild green yonder? Travel around the edge of the leaf? Cross over to the other side of the leaf?
Zooming in on the gold, sunset-lit filaments of this grass seed head, I saw an anomaly.
Wee, Small Fellow Hiding in the Seeds - Summer 2011
A fat filament? No, it moved. Although it was well camouflaged, it definitely had legs and eyes. I don’t know what it is, but several of the same variety of grass sported similar denizens. Do you know what it is?
Here’s a flashback for you. So, there I sat on the pond bank, stalking the ever wary dragon fly and damsel fly (really, I am not picky, I’ll shoot whichever will light close enough and hold still long enough!), when I turned my head and spotted this guy on a leaf really close to my head. Moving slowly, so as not to scare it off (never had I seen anything resembling this critter), I turned and focused the camera. Voila! French is not my language, so ほら！すごい虫ですねえ。
Wheel Bug - Summer 2011 - Arilus Cristatus
Well, I just called it a prehistoric-looking bug, but my friend Travis did a Google Search and came up with the common name, scientific name, and an article about the beast. It turns out it is a “true bug,” something my Dad had tried to tell me about once – that there were insects that were truly bugs, and insects that were not – a member of the Assassin Bug family. And look there on its proboscis, a little assassinated insect from which it is presumably drinking the juices!
I was so excited to make a new (to me) discovery! And there were wheel bugs all around me, once I started looking. They are really quite a large insect, I don’t know how I never noticed them before. What an absorbing hour of shooting that was 🙂
