Aha. Found the add-image icon. Not at the top left, but on the toolbar, right in the middle. This little guy, which is dusted with pollen from, of all things, wild onion flowers, is a four-spotted checkered beetle. When I first saw it, I thought it was a lady beetle--little red beetle, black spots, easy mistake. But it was the wrong shape, and then I saw those amazing reindeer-antler antennae. Supposedly they're common on rose-family flowers in early spring--pyracantha, plums, etc--but I never saw one before in my life, and I've been photographing things on the wild plum flowers for several years. Some people think wildlife management is all about deer, quail, and turkey--with an occasional songbird or fish or turtle--but if you don't have the invertebrates at the base of the pyramid, you don't have a healthy system. There's a lot of stuff smaller and less obvious than this beetle, but a lot of it is hard to photograph...so I'm sticking to "above-ground and can be seen by human eyes" for now.
Aha. Found the add-image icon. Not at the top left, but on the toolbar, right in the middle. This little guy, which is dusted with pollen from, of all things, wild onion flowers, is a four-spotted checkered beetle. When I first saw it, I thought it was a lady beetle--little red beetle, black spots, easy mistake. But it was the wrong shape, and then I saw those amazing reindeer-antler antennae. Supposedly they're common on rose-family flowers in early spring--pyracantha, plums, etc--but I never saw one before in my life, and I've been photographing things on the wild plum flowers for several years. Some people think wildlife management is all about deer, quail, and turkey--with an occasional songbird or fish or turtle--but if you don't have the invertebrates at the base of the pyramid, you don't have a healthy system. There's a lot of stuff smaller and less obvious than this beetle, but a lot of it is hard to photograph...so I'm sticking to "above-ground and can be seen by human eyes" for now.
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The Meat Grinder
After the several successful forays into home butchery, after the local custom-meat-packing places disappeared, we (we being John the rancher,…
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City Zoom
Zipped off to the city (somewhat later than planned, no surprise) but did meet a friend for lunch at Threadgill's on North Lamar, one of our…
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Interesting bug
This afternoon I saw a treehopper (or some kind of hopper) on the kitchen window screen, so went outside to photograph it. The wind was very…
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