I just returned from a trip to the smokies and this guy was a new wildflower for me ; a Showy Orchis! Its not a particularily uncommon native orchid as far as i can tell, but somehow ive never managed to catch one before
Stop, why did your camera not tell you the card is not there?
It did, but I, being as blind as I am, somehow didn’t even notice until I was already done. It made the shutter sound still, so assumed everything was fine.
That actually happened to me before. Thankfully I didn’t photograph any lifers!
I went back to the same pond today, and photographed two more lifers! One of which, I didn’t see yesterday! I’ll be sure to post them back on here once I upload them.
Wow that’s an awesome find, great job! :) I love when I manage to get good shots with my phone.
Repeating from another thread, because it’s a lifer worth celebrating
Microtypus - thanks to Dr Michael Sharkey https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/154057556
I got nearly a dozen lifers from Hunting Island SP detailed in this Journal Post
But my favorite is prob this rare Peppermint Shrimp
Spotted four plus lifers today on a nature walk. All were great but bucking my avian focus my fav might have been this six-spotted tiger beetle:
Last night as I was sitting in front of my computer entering my latest observations, I noticed something tiny and bright fly by my face and land on the curtains beside my monitor.
Wow. Who knew iNat had added ‘delivery service’ to their lineup?
This is the sixth iNat observation of this little flower beetle (Anthocomus equestris) in my region.
Thanks iNat!
Six-spotted tiger beetles are such cool looking beetles
Found a few more archival photos from the Dominican Republic – this should be all of them now. Way back when I took this picture, I thought it was a ladybird larva eating a snail. This week I finally uploaded it, and within a day, I found out that it isn’t a ladybird at all – it’s a firefly, maybe one of the species with larviform females.
Jumping spider https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/155078616 
What a cute creature
I’m becoming aware that I am unreasonably excited by spring ephemerals. Given that, here’s a few new ones!
Dwarf Ginseng! I wasn’t really sure what I had until I went to upload it, because we were trying to outpace the sunset and I was in a hurry, but legit just super happy with this.
Red Trillium. Eventually I will add all the Ohio species of Trillium to my pokedex. Four down, five to go, though I saw plenty of Trillium flexipes on this same trip it was just raining and I didn’t feel like pulling out the camera
I finally got a macro lens, and photographed some pretty cool ants!
Lasius neoniger
Tetramorium immigrans
Homidia socia
New mayfly visiting UV lamp in my garden Genus Caenis (Common Square-Gills) · iNaturalist
Things are finally starting to MOVE out there! So I’ve had quite a few lifers added this week but perhaps my fave was something I was very surprised is fairly rarely observed (on iNat at least) in my region:
My favourite bit about this observation was how I found them (there were several). I decided to follow a very small, but dried out run-off stream that was wandering down the escarpment and came across a couple of larger boulders with a funky, fishy smell. That’s when I discovered things that had, well… STOPPED moving.
About 3 dozen, very dried out, baby sunfish corpses. And moving about them (besides the flies) – were the beetles! Score! (Stinky score, but score!)
