This lifer, Apical Prominent, is one of the coolest moths I’ve seen in a while.
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I had a pretty exciting lifer for me this week. For a long time now, I’ve noticed these crane fly like things that fly pretty weird around my yard. Before this weekend I couldn’t get one of them to land, but this weekend one of them decided to bless me with a chance to get some photos and figure out what the heck these things are. May I present to you: the Eastern Phantom Crane fly! (I think)
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About a week ago I cycled through a polder above Amsterdam with a friend. We stopped somewhere to bathe our feet on this warm, sunny day, when he came up to me holding his arm in a funny way. Clearly, he was bringing an insect for me to photograph. I was amazed at this Donacia clavipes (Gewone rietkever in Dutch), because of its beautiful golden colour.
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That’s a pity. We get a couple species of chinquapins out here on the West Coast, but we seem to be out of range for these moths, so I guess I won’t be going out to find one now. It’s gorgeous, though.
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Completely unexpected lifer - by total chance I stopped next to a conifer tree and noticed the tiniest mushrooms growing on its bark, maybe 1mm high. I think I finally found a stubble lichen! And as a bonus, there was an even smaller animal crawling around on one of the stubbles - no clue what it could be but it was very small 
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My guess is a Collembolan – it looks like it has six legs and two antennae, all of approximately equal length.
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It reminds me of a very strange crane fly I saw a few months ago in the woods here in Mexico. I was looking up close at a bromeliad (to see if anything lived in it, something that doesn’t happen that often here), when I accidentally scared it away (the crane fly, not the bromeliad). It was brown, with some bands on its legs like the Phantom Crane Fly, large, and when landed, it hung from a bromeliad leaf only with its first pair of legs, like if they were arms. The rest of the legs hung vertically with the body. Its flight was also very strange.
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I saw what may be a Townsend’s x Hermit warbler, which I think is pretty neat! It flew right to the campsite we were staying at with a mouthful of what looked like dog hair, but could have been mountain goat fur from before they were eradicated.
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The small creature looks like a mite (I think the appendages in front are legs, not antennae)
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This beetle I saw while walking back to my car at the Big Thicket National Preserve visitor center. I didn’t get to enjoy my find or try for a better photo since I was being attacked by a swarm of mosquitos. I was there for a science symposium, not for a nature walk so I didn’t have any repellent on. We’ve had a lot of flooding this spring and the mosquitos are terrible.
Fiery Searcher
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/217160205
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This Pleasing Fungus Beetle (Megalodacne heros) is an iNat range extension in Western New York (although there are a handful of observations in the far, southwestern corner of the state).
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Someone was kind enough to go through my Nomada observations and now my multiple observations in one genus have been narrowed down to three different species – all three are, of course, new lifers for me and, for two of them, mine is the only observation on iNaturalist. Here’s my favorite from among them:
- Nomada pekingensis (노랑털알락꽃벌)
Similarly, another user went through some of my crab observations and helped narrow a few down to species, resulting in a couple more lifers. This one was a surprising find at a busy beach on the west coast of South Korea:
- Charybdis japonica (Asian Paddle Crab · 민꽃게)
I’ve also been uploading photos from a visit to Soyosan - a mountain in South Korea not too far from the border with North Korea - that I took two weeks ago. The weather report called for a chance of rain at 3pm but instead it started raining buckets at 1pm. Not the best weather, but it meant I had the mountain mostly to myself. Added two new jewel beetle species to my life list, with this the prettier of the two:
- Chrysobothris succedanea (배나무육점박이비단벌레)
Also came across two caterpillars that I know I’ve never seen before but I can’t narrow down much further than ‘Lepidoptera’. One is presumably a geometer moth with ‘horns’ while the second is this magnificent fellow:
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We’re getting an unusual amount of rain for the usually dry area I’m in, so lots of interesting new wildflowers, moss, and fungi lately. Probably my favourite is these little cup (trumpet?) lichens I found growing on a dead log. I’m not sure what kind they are exactly but they look like little alien tendrils. 
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Fabulous! Love a slime mold!
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Woah! Look at those feet!
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It finally happened! The shrews came out while I had my camera! I’ve been stalking these little dudes in my yard for a solid year.
I put some peanuts on the ground for the Blue Jays and the shrews loved them. I had to stop looking at the picture previews because I was laughing so hard I couldn’t hold the camera straight. They are ridiculous fuzzy sausages.
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To me, they are all named “Shrewsly-Woozley.” Because you have to admit that they kind of woozle along.
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Admittedly I don’t have a species-level ID on this one yet, but I can still say with certainty that I haven’t seen a slug of this size before!
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Cladonia are my favorite genera of lichen <3
I’ll get out the giant Lichens of North America book my friend loaned me and see if I can help
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