Tag: insects

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Luna Moths

On the afternoon of June 14, 2004, something quite remarkable happened in my Kensington, Md. backyard, about which I briefly posted on that day. My wife urgently called me from my basement office. Beautiful butterflies had taken up residence on my daughter’s snow sled, which she had dragged out and left for some inexplicable reason. I immediately recognized them as something better: Luna moths.

I was an amateur bug collector in my youth and teens (someday I should tell you about raising praying mantids). So interested, I came a hair’s width from majoring in entomology (e.g. study of insects) in college. I dissected a good number of animals during anatomy and physiology classes, but nothing grossed me out more than cutting open a cockroach. But I digress. 

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Flickr a Day 76: ‘Common Green Lacewing’

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Surely, this isn’t the green photo you expected. But I couldn’t resist this wonderful closeup (e.g., Macro shot) taken with little more than a digital compact—Canon PowerShot SX40 HS, which zooms from 24-840mm. Yikes! Meet the lacewing, one of my favorite insects growing up in Northern Maine.

Martin Cooper, who joined Flickr in February 2013, makes a photographic study of the fungi, fauna, and bugs of Christchurch Park in Ipswich, United Kingdom.  He shot today’s selection on March 12, 2014. Vitals: f/8, ISO 100, 1/200 sec, f/42.4mm. 

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Where Do They Go?

Every few nights I come down into my basement office—oh, about a half our after the lights go out—and kill crickets. Those pesky varmints are a real pain.

Occasionally, though, I’ll catch one about before the lights have gone out and kill it. Last night, like other times when I squashed one, I was too lazy to clean it up. Like other times, the cricket carcass disappeared overnight.