I have a few lifers from the past week but they haven’t been IDed yet so I’ll just say a few of my favorites from the past month. These include:
And a few others like the first Eastern Narrow-mouthed Toad I’ve seen and not heard, and the Queen Angelfish
Just as a bonus…
Found a Beelzebub bee-eater (Mallophora leschenaulti) on the sidewalk this morning!
(observation)
This week I was visiting a friend, so I got to knock another state off my list! This week is also the first time I managed to photograph a fly, that was much larger than the typical flies hanging around us or biting our feet. I have been unable to ID to a species level.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/180466246
Saw this cool Osprey for the first time a few months ago. I saw it successfully catch and make off with a fish! A return to the location showed the Osprey was still there months later, might be a new resident of the pond.
Also a big day for water striders, I saw three new species, one of which only having 28 RG observations on iNat! I saw them all in the same location too.
Trepobates subnitidus
Rheumatobates rileyi
Subgenus Gerris
A couple days ago my wife spotted a ‘spider’ at the bottom of a bowl of apples on the kitchen counter. Turned out to be this guy:
.
It was weird to think that this Masked Hunter assassin bug (Reduvius personatus) probably contained some of ‘me’ in the form of household dust, stuck to its unique camouflage.
Not too many species can make that claim for an observer!
Here’s looking at you – and er, me – kid!
I have never seen an interrupted spider wasp look so excited before.
After 3 weeks in Ecuador and 3 in Maine, I have so many it’s hard to choose!
Maybe:
(Ecuador, week 1) This spoonbill although with a visit to El Cajas NP + my first week in the country, I spotted so many lifers it’s hard to pick (shoutout to this adorable grass mouse).
(Ecuador, week 2) This spooky oilbird, a bird I desperately wanted to see but never really expected to.
(Ecuador, week 3) BUG SEX!!! But no, my favorite was probably actually this teeny-tiny white-bellied woodstar.
(Maine, week 1) This handsome merlin. This year was a great one for falcons, with me spotting and photographing a peregrine, American kestrel, and merlin for the first time all in 2023.
(Maine, week 2) In an odd case of a possible lifer, this Bonaparte’s (?) gull. I’m not sure if it’s a juvenile Bony’s or laughing, so it may or may not be a lifer.
(Maine, week 3) This week was a great one for lifers-- harriers, gray seals, a great cormorant, a barred owl, suspected blue-winged teals, and a possible gadwall-- but my very favorite is this surf scoter, so sneaky I failed to see him until I was reviewing my pictures. The species is rare enough in the area at that time of year that EBird still hasn’t accepted the record.
a classic bird. Very cool!
You know, Cicada Killers aren’t uncommon, but somehow I’ve never seen one before. I only ever seem to run into wasps that want to start a fight, but this sweet lady was just doing her thing
No truer words have ever been said.
Bald faced hornets truly take offense at anyone existing anywhere close to them.
In Colorado, I only see them flying away 
We had a small gang of European Woolcarder bees ‘takeover’ a freshly flowering shrub in our back garden this week. As I was watching them move in, I saw one of those boys (males only fight) take on a massive carpenter bee that was easily 4 times its size, and do a frantic midair wrestling match that resulted in driving away the larger bee.
On smaller bees they just squatted and pinned them down for a while, and let them go. That seemed to work!
I haven’t seen them tackle any wasps yet though.
Slime time again!
My first sighting of the Wasp Nest slime mold this week.
Discovered a huge ripening colony on an old log on a local trail.
I also tried out my ‘hands-on’ focus stacking technique to milk the detail out of of these tiny little ‘landscapes’.
(ISO 16000, 1/120s, natural in-the-deep-shade lighting!)
I want to know how these pictures are so ungrainy at 16000 ISO - is it post processing? Or do you have a much better camera than my poor dinky d5100? XD
