Well, folks, this is the penultimate batch of photos I have, so if you don’t contribute, the feature will die. Don’t make me beg.
Today, though, we have a contribution from reader Lukas Konecny, who has provided some introductory notes (indented). You can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.
Some of these nature shots are quite old and I have never had a good camera, but I tried to pick some good ones (some of the grasshopper photos may need zooming in and cropping but when I tried to do that, my software always distorted the photos). The cicada is from Greece (it sits on a wire rope), the rest are from Slovakia, the mushroom was in a forest and the dragonfly in my university dormitory in Bratislava while others (owls, hummingbird hawkmoth, cat, grasshopper) are all from a garden. The autumn owl (in a cherry tree) is from the same year (2015) as the spring owlet (in an apricot tree) so it might be the same bird. The grasshopper and the cat are from this summer – the cat watched me while I was releasing the grasshopper that had made its way to my room during the night and to my relief didn’t immediately attack it but let it fly away in peace. Maybe nature finding its way into human spaces is the common theme (except for the mushroom, that’s just autumnal feeling).
Cat:
Cicada:
Dragonfly:
Grasshopper photos:
Macroglossumm a hummingbird hawkmoth:
Owl, autum:
Owlet, spring:
A very nice selection Lukas. Thank you!
Fun series – and then owls, so magnificent and … what’s the word,… mysterious?… to encounter…
Nice pictures! Love the cat. Having a therapsid in there made me smile.
The hummingbird hawkmoth’s proboscis is very nicely shown.
Very nice. I don’t know why cropping a picture should distort it. The What’s App app is known to do that, so I’d try something else.
When I wanted to crop the photos to remove my shadow, they were for some reason saved in their original dimensions, so they ended up stretched (using Shotwell, an image viewer in Gnome-based Linux).
Not to be pedantic, but the “grasshopper” is actually a katydid (bush cricket). Sometimes they are called (misleadingly) “Long-horned grasshoppers”, as they look grasshopper-like and as with their cricket relatives they have long antennae. (Grasshoppers have short antennae, thus “Short-horned grasshoppers.). That one is a female, note the long ovipositor extending from the abdomen.
Thank you for the support (author here). I was supposed to write a better text for the photos, but then procrastinated on it until they were due. They are taken either with a phone or some basic digital camera and I was not sure if they would measure to the standards of this page. So I am happy you liked them.
Apparently you can buy Amanita muscaria gummies. Thanks, I think I’ll pass.