OK, well that’s odd. No, more than odd. Sinister. Surreal. Sinisturreal, if you will. I walked out onto the porch with my camera in hopes of getting some hummingbird images around their freshly refilled feeder this glorious (if muggy morning) and something brought my eyes up into the neighbor’s camphor laurel tree whose boughs reach …
Every year around this time the scraggly gangly malnourished magnolia tree growing (and I use “growing” in its sickliest sense) on the parkway in front of our house surprises me with a nice crop of blossoms. And every year around this time when one opens in just the right place I’ll park myself on the …
(click it for the bigger picture) An intriguing spider, not quite one centimeter in length and of unknown species found on one of the hammock ropes in the backyard. I’ve not before seen one with such a large and tall cephalothorax in relation to its abdomen. I have an ID request in to the indispensable …
Found this morning hanging out on the snail blossom vine. For a sense of its scale, the insect could have fully stood upon my thumbnail with room to spare (click it for the bigger if grainier picture).
You hang around our backyard long enough and you come to know something’s up when the mockingbirds discard all their calls save for one that fascinatingly mimics the screeeee! of a hawk. Whether or not it’s a raccoon or a squirrel or an actual bird of prey that’s raised their alarm is unknown. All you …
An exceptionally intriguing and accommodating moth hanging out on the edge of a planted pot in our backyard: (click to ginormify)
(click it for the bigger picture) I sat snapping way too many shots of this butterfly on a succession of leaves — all of them with its wings up — hoping it would lower them so I could capture its colorful pattern. It would eventually take off and flutter around the backyard before coming back …