a little wild   (a small slice of wildlife)

I hadn’t been to King Phillip’s Rock in a long time.  It’s the best place I’ve found for insects, for whatever reason.

Here’s a gorgeous wasp, Ichneumonidae:

I love scorpionflies for their alien appearance:

I think this is a bee-like tachinid fly.  Maybe Epalpus cf signifer.

A beautiful Derbid planthopper:

I like the light in this photo:

Caterpillar:

Theridiidae?

There was a stag beetle I was trying to photograph, but it escaped.  As it escaped, it led to a congregation of dozens (maybe hundreds) of click beetles (Elateridae).  I think this was mating behavior, don’t know what else it could be.

This is either a robber fly (Laphria) or a golden-backed snipe fly, with its Elateridae prey.

There was a major infestation of moth caterpillars, perhaps gypsy moths.

Nothing improves my mood like a walk in the woods.

Late spring means, among other things, lots of salamanders. Almost every time I picked up a rock, there was an Eastern red-backed salamander beneath it.

Salamanders are not all you see under logs and rocks.  There were lots of sowbugs — but I didn’t get to see any sowbug-killers, spiders belonging to Dysderidae.

This spider (Linyphiidae?) was hanging around doing some yoga:

Note sure yet which version I like better.

It’s been a while since I’ve taken the camera out for a walk.  Late winter is more like early spring this year.  It’s a season of change.

There was still snow on the moss in select places, as you can see.  Not sure if I like that photo better, or this one:

There was some kind of cockleburr that was very amenable to macro photographs:

I spent most of my time lying on the edge of a vernal pool.  I got to see some very nice Dytiscid beetles swimming underwater, though I couldn’t get any photographs.  It was still worth getting wet for.

It’s always nice to go out soon after a snowfall. We didn’t get Snowmageddon, but we had a bad time last year, so we deserved not to.

I cannot believe I’ve never really explored the Beaver Brook trail. I was happy to make good on that today.

I tried hard to capture the feeling of the snow drifting through the air, captured in the sunlight. Can’t say I nailed it, but will keep trying.

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: