a little wild   (a small slice of wildlife)

This boulder was dragged in by the glaciers thousands of years ago, and is enormous. I was trying to give a feel for its brutal sense of massiveness by not giving the photograph (and the viewer) too much breathing room on the right. I hope it worked.

Ice crystals preserved in a hole in the wood, perhaps made by a beetle grub:

We went for a Christmas Day walk at Borderland State Park to enjoy the special weather. There were prominent sundogs in the sky, as well as this circumzenithal arc :

November and December are the brown months. The spectacular fall colors are gone, and the snow usually hasn’t coated the ground yet. It takes a little more effort, but what stand out at this time are the more subtle patterns from the bare branches.

Another crop of the same photo:

Continuing my obsession with this particular view of wood and rock. One of these days I’ll get this photo right; so far, every one I’ve taken has had just that one thing wrong with it.

It is a sin to miss a beautiful fall day in New England. We went to Stony Brook Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary in Norfolk: trees, water, birds and the late evening sun.

Even the ducks know when it’s time to go.

We booked a weekend in Vermont, but were afraid the foliage would be past peak. A surprise for us, the colors were nothing but spectacular.

Leaf, bark and stone

A rockface that I was obsessed with:

From near the top of Mt. Mansfield:

Ninigret Park in Rhode Island

A little experimental: I took a longer exposure of the previous scene (1/3 second) while it was very windy, to get a wavy effect. Enhanced the color curve a bit, but no other editing.

Praying Mantises are fierce predators. I can’t but help notice, however, that they look like complete goofballs.

At Ninigret Beach, there were a lot of birds.

We saw a wasp either laying eggs in a grasshopper, or dragging it back to its burrow to feed the babies. It was identified on BugGuide as Prionyx:

More photos from the backyard.

Candy-striped leafhoppers always put on a show:

Syrphidae:

Araneid orb weaver (genus Araneus? Neoscona? Not sure).

Not a very clean eater, is it?

You don’t have to go far to see interesting things.

Not a very good photo, but it seems to me to be an ant-mimic spider. Perhaps Synemosyna formica, in Salticidae.

Dreaming of fat and juicy flies, perhaps:

An ambush bug (Phymatinae):

Candy-striped leafhopper, Graphocephala coccinea:

Haven’t had a lot of good insect photos lately, but as always, I’ve enjoyed the search. I don’t fish, so this is my substitute: an excuse to go outdoors and enjoy my time.

This is maybe a sweat bee. I have been trying hard to get good photos of sweat bees, cuckoo wasps or jewel wasps, without a lot of success. This is as good as I have got so far, but it doesn’t really do justice to the iridescent colors.

This is dragonfly season!

I’m not sure what the significance of the “tail-up” pose is. Some seem to believe that it has to do with regulating temperature through sun exposure.

Underneath a rock. Perhaps Amaurobiidae? If so, I would expect to see spinnerets.

Cute little fly outside my house. Perhaps genus Chlorops, but I Am Not An Expert. [Edit: identified by Kai Beck on the Facebook Entomology group, as Lauxaniidae, but Drosophila was also mentioned as a possibility.]

I hadn’t gone out for a walk in the woods for much too long, so it was time. There were a lot of dragonflies, but I couldn’t get close enough to them to use the macro; the zoom would have to do.

Even more macro abstracts:

A large-ish group of deer:

And some of the dragonflies I promised: