Category: insects

Readers’ wildlife photos

September 3, 2026 • 8:30 am

Today’s arthropod photos come from a visit to Poland from reader Jan Malik.  Jan’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them (once or twice):

During my visit to Poland in June this year, I spent a few hours with a macro lens, looking for arthropods in three different habitats: a xerothermic dry meadow, a subalpine bog, and an alpine zone in the Tatra Mountains. I did my best to identify the species, but I can offer no guarantees as they were new to me.

First, the dipterans from the hoverfly family, all Batesian mimics of the more ferocious Hymenoptera. The Common Drone Fly (Eristalis tenax) resembles a honeybee or a small bumblebee quite convincingly; it even buzzes like a bee. I believe this is a female, judging by the widely spaced eyes:

Another hoverfly, this time a wasp mimic, is possibly a Sphecomyia vespiformis. Like all Diptera, its antennae are short, but here, to increase similarity to a wasp with long antennae, they grow from an elongated column on the insect’s face:

Rounding up the order Diptera is a possible Marmalade Hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus). This female is a peaceful pollinator as an adult, but its larva is a predator of aphids:

Moving over to the order Lepidoptera, the first is a moth (genus Gillmeria); at first sight, I thought it was a crane fly, but long antennae place it firmly as a plume moth, even though I’m not sure which species it is. When at rest, these insects are masters of camouflage, resembling dried-out twigs:

Possibly a Ringlet (Aphantopus hyperantus), which is common in this part of Europe:

A final lepidopteran is a skipper (family Hesperiidae), but it is difficult to pin it down to a species. Possibly a Small Skipper (Thymelicus sylvestris), going by the orange tip of its antenna?:

Now for Coleoptera (beetles): a Black longicorn beetle (Spondylis buprestoides). Both adults and larvae have powerful jaws which they use to chew through the wood of dead trees, accelerating the carbon cycle:

The next insect, from the same longhorn beetle family as the previous one, is a Black-striped Longhorn Beetle (Stenurella melanura), probably a female. The larvae feed on rotting wood, but adults prefer pollen:

Another coleopteran is a Common Red Soldier Beetle (Rhagonycha fulva). Its red color is an honest warning—when disturbed, they exude a fluid containing defensive acids that can cause chemical irritation. Here it feeds on pollen, but like other soldier beetles, if an aphid or a caterpillar is found, it is also eaten.

The last coleopteran, hiding in a flower during the rain, is a leaf beetle from the genus Cryptocephalus (I will go out on a limb and say the Dead-nettle Leaf Beetle, Cryptocephalus aureolus). The genus name originates from its head, which is tucked below the protective chitin armor:

Now for the arachnophiles amongst the readers, an orb-weaver spider (family Araneidae) having a meal out of a fly. Orb-weavers are highly variable in color, changing them to match their surroundings. They recycle their webs often by eating them and spinning new ones:

Another araneae, possibly a Wasp Spider (Argiope bruennichi), is a close European cousin of the common American yellow garden spider. Like its New World relative, it spins a ladder-like structure called a stabilimentum. The discussion is ongoing as to what the adaptive purpose of this structure is: possibly a UV reflector to lure bees or flies, or a warning for birds not to fly into it and destroy it, much like our window decals to prevent bird strikes:

The spider waiting inside the flower is a flower crab spider, likely a pale variant of the common Goldenrod Crab Spider (Misumena vatia); I believe the same spiders are also abundant in North America. The flower could be a bellflower (genus Campanula). These spiders also change color, from greenish to yellow to off-white, matching the flowers where they sit in ambush:

Now for a few Hymenoptera—possibly a Black Garden Ant (Lasius niger) tending to a dense colony of Black Bean Aphids (Aphis fabae). Like many other ant species, they tap aphids with their antennae, and if the sucking hemipteran is ready, it releases a drop of sugary honeydew. In return, ants act as bodyguards, protecting the aphids from predatory hoverflies and ladybugs:

A parasitoid ichneumon wasp, possibly a Hoverfly larva parasitoid wasp (Diplazon laetatorius). It lays eggs in hoverfly larvae or eggs, and the wasp larva waits until its host grows big enough to become a substantial meal, then devours it from the inside. This species is said to be mostly parthenogenetic, with males being a rarity:

Another hymenopteran, a sawfly, is probably the Common Green Sawfly (Tenthredo mesomela). These sawflies are active predators of other small insects:

Lastly, I didn’t expect a Red-banded Froghopper (Cercopis vulnerata). Its two chief weapons are a nice red and black aposematic coloration, a habit of making itself scarce via powerful jumps, and joints in its legs that ooze a foul-tasting hemolymph if a predator decides to bite. Did a scientist actually taste that fluid to report on its bitter taste, or are we still waiting for a volunteer?:

Readers’ wildlife photos

August 23, 2026 • 8:15 am

Today’s photos are from Dean Graetz, who’s compiled various assorted photos, each with a story. Click on the photos to enlarge them; Dean’s stories and captions are indented.

Photos with a Story

Photography makes my life interesting.  I photograph scenes that look interesting and then explore the story they have to tell.  Almost always, the story is far more interesting than my photograph.  Here are eight examples of photos and their story.

This is the most beautiful flower I know. It is a dry country ephemeral and its (arterial) blood-red flowers are stunning. It is much loved and cultivated under the name Sturts Desert Pea (Swainsona formosa).  Its story is from the ‘Dreamtime’ mythology of Aboriginal people.  A young women (and child) who were promised to a Warrior eloped with another man: an act punishable by death.  The vengeful jilted Warrior tracked them, and at night, killed all three.  At dawn, he was horrified to find these flowers growing where blood had been spilt.  No matter where he fled, dawn relentlessly revealed the persecuting blood flowers, displaying his crime and eventually destroying him.:

The story of this ‘cute’ image is a technological one.  The water-repellent waxy cuticle of this sturdy leaf forces the rain drops to coalesce and form slightly-flattened spherical globules.  Each globule now acts as a lens visibly enlarging details of the underlying leaf surface.  A natural microscope.  In the1670s, an amateur Dutch scientist, Leeuwenhoek, made the first microscope using simple glass beads—a globule lookalike—as lenses.  His invention significantly and irreversibly enhanced human observing power and began the critical science of microbiology.  Since before and after, with raindrops and waxy leaves, Nature continues to demonstrate its small-scale microscopes:

A near-spherical, balanced granite rock poses three questions: why round, why balanced, and how did it get there?  Roundness is a granite characteristic because it (exfoliate) weathers in large slivers (see LHS edge below) like a peeling orange.  The rock is balanced because a line through its centre of mass passes through the contact area with the base rock – thus perfectly vertical.  Because there is no hard rock connection between the balanced and its base, how did it get there?  The geological answer is a step-wise process beginning with the cooling and cracking of liquid magma, millions to billions of years ago, then chemical weathering of hard rock to less resistant material, and finally the eroding away of the softer material.  So, the balanced rock in the picture is the remnant core of very, very much larger volume of granite now removed – like the pit/stone of a peach.  It is difficult to accept this explanation because we just cannot grasp the vast expanse of time involved, but the circumstantial geological evidence is there:

A female Leaf Curling Spider (Phonognatha graeffei) hidden by the structure she built, waits for the vibrations of flying insects struggling in her web.  This one species, though common, has an uncommon set of behaviours such as selecting a leaf, curling and silking it into shape, then hauling it up from ground level and centring it into a funnelling web.  The sexes cohabit in separate locations within the sheltering leaf.  This spider’s story raises the usual two questions.  The Why question is easy – because it obviously works.  The species is sufficiently abundant to be labelled Common.  How could such a strategy come to be?  There is the usual blind faith assertion of Big G’s intelligent design.  Or the reasoned argument that because the behaviour is instinctive, not learned, then it must be heritable and therefore likely variable.  Thereafter, Nature will relentlessly reward the strategy that ‘works best’, as it has done here:

This is a difficult photo to interpret.  I was shooting straight up into the sky.  The uppermost layer is actually a shelf or ledge projecting out over the lower rock wall.  The story here is based on two features.  There are two very different rock types with a very sharp boundary between the two.  The upper layer appears to have been smeared over the lower.  The upper is a layer of rocky ‘rubbish’, materials of diverse types and sizes jumbled together.  It looks like what a bulldozer blade might push up.  The bulldozer here was a glacier.  The timing was about 720 million years ago when this part of the Australian continent was located at the Equator.  Now known as the Sturtian Glaciation, it began the speculation that planet Earth may once have been Snowball Earth.  Geological timing and ages are always thought-provoking:

This magnificently gaudy grasshopper introduces an intriguing story.  Locally known as Leichhardt’s Grasshopper (Petasida ephippigera), its flamboyant colouring says, ‘don’t eat me’.  It is not common, found only on certain plants in three areas of northern Australia.  The intriguing story is about Leichhardt, a young man seeking fame and fortune as an explorer and naturalist.  Which he did with his 1845 expedition (4000 km, 2500 m, 443 days long).  On that long walk, he encountered and described this grasshopper species noting their abundance.  Subsequently, he achieved lasting fame with his 1848 expedition to span the East to West coasts of the continent (4000 km, 2500 m), an expedition that completely disappeared without a trace.  Interestingly, so did the namesake grasshopper.  It was assumed extinct until positively identified more than a hundred years after their 1845 description of abundance.  I photographed this one in the same type of country where Leichhardt first saw them.  This was a minor thrill because I had long known the story and had speculated where in Australia’s deserts the 1848 Leichhardt party had ‘done a perish’:

Kenya (30 years ago): Day1.  Field work with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).  My local (Kikuyu) Assistants are using my soil colour charts to determine the colour classification of their skin.  I had explained to them that Melanin determined the skin colour of all humans: colour variation was in the amount and packaging.  My sermon concluded with the statement that no people were Black.  Very dark Brown: Yes.  But not the derogatory Black.  My two Assistants agreed but were quite sure that the Maasai were Black.  I knew that the Kikuyu disliked the Maasai and thought this statement reflected cultural bias, not fact.  Nobody was Black!:

Kenya: Day2.  UNEP added a young woman to the fieldwork.  Neither of us knew why.  A young American non-scientist, who was very excited to be out in the African Bush.  My concern was that bra-less may be comfortable but potentially unwise.  Come noon, universal lunchtime, with the wonderful lunch packs the tourist hotels provided.  Right on time, two Maasai appeared, both armed, announced by my retreating Assistants as “Trouble, Bwana, trouble!”  I did think then that it could turn into an SOS moment (aka Shit!  Oh!  Shit!).  However, it was peacefully resolved by international trade.  The two Maasai agreed to one photograph and a swift departure for two unopened lunch boxes, one Australian and one American.  She thought it was all thrilling.  I was both hungry and wrong.  The skin colour of one Maasai was the darkest I had ever seen.  But Black?  I plead selective breeding because the Maasai value Black as a spiritual ‘strong’ colour and that could influence mate choice.  My Kikuyu Assistants were delighted that they knew more than the Bwana:

Readers’ wildlife photos

August 10, 2026 • 8:15 am

Stalwart regular and crack arthopod photographer Mark Sturtevant has sent us photos of spiders, lepidopterans, and assorted insects. His captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

The various arthropods shown here were all photographed from my area in eastern Michigan. Most were taken in the field, but a couple were staged shots. Let’s begin with spiders.

The first is a new species for me. This is the Butterfly Orbweaver, Araneus pegnia. The name comes from the white four-lobed marking on the abdomen. Although very stretched in this gravid female, in thinner individuals it does look like a four-winged butterfly.

Next up is my highly reliable always-there-for-me-in-case-I-need-it jumping spider, usually called the Tan Jumping Spider (Platycryptus undatus). They are common on our shed, but lately they are also turning up on our front and back porches. This is perhaps because I often leave the porch lights on these days to draw in nocturnal insects. This adorable male was photographed as a manual focus stack on the dining room table. You can see the reflection of my home-made flash diffuser in the eyes, along with the black outline of the lens. As usual, I forgot to remove the clamp of the Raynox diopter lens that is used to boost magnification, and so you can see that too in the reflection.

A small obsession with me lately is shown with the next spider. This is the Candy-striped Spider, Enoplognatha ovata, and she has the remains of a small Hemipteran on a daisy flower where she was hanging out. Candy-striped Spiders are in the family of cobweb-weaving spiders (which includes our common house spiders and widows), but this species lives our in the sunshine, and is commonly seen lurking just under the flowers of herbaceous plants. One item of notoriety about them is that they prowl around their plants at night, looking for sleeping insects which then never wake up. So, I regularly scour our gardens to keep track of the known spiders to see what they have been up to. They almost always have prey on hand, and after a good night they may have several insects with them. I call these collections “a little shop of horrors”, inspired by their nocturnal habit of dining out.

The last of the spiders is a Hammock Spider, Pityohyphantes costatus. They build untidy hammock-like webs on plants in forests, and they too seem to do quite well. This one got a Long-legged Fly (Dolichopodidae), which are super alert flies with very fast reflexes as any macrophotographer will know:

That will be all for spiders. Next up are Odonates. This little damselfly is the Eastern Forktail (Ischnura verticalis). I really need to get more damselfly pictures since there are so many species that I have never photographed. A long focal length macro lens would help immensely!

The next Odonate is one of my favorites. This is the Calico Pennant Dragonfly (Celithemis elisa). Mature males like this one are stunningly colored with deep reds, while the similar females have yellow coloration:

A place that I call the Magic Field has a very dense population of grasshoppers. One of my favorite species commonly seen out there are the Carolina Grasshoppers (Dissosteira carolina), But surely everyone in the U.S. and parts of Canada are familiar with them. Adults have boldly contrasting black and yellow hind wings, as shown in the linked picture, but with wings folded at rest they are well camouflaged. The grasshoppers are divided about evenly into two color morphs, and these are shown here as nymphs that were picked up in the Magic Field for staged pictures on the dining room table. The combined picture is a bit of post-processing trickery since they were photographed separately:

The next picture is a katydid that was also found in the Magic Field. This is a nymph of the Fork-tailed Bush Katydid (Scudderia furcate). It was systematically cleaning all 6 feet without any concern about my proximity:

The little planthopper in the next picture was pulled in from the porch lights mentioned above. This is Tylozygus bifidus:

Lets’ wrap this up with Lepidopterans. It is always a special day to find the caterpillars of giant silk moths, but the species that seems almost common are Promethea Moth caterpillars (Callosamia promethea). These grow into beautiful pastel colored caterpillars the size of large pickles, and later into a palm-sized moth like the one shown in the link. But for now, these youngsters were the size of rice grains. The younger caterpillars tend to stay together through their early instars. It was neat that they had even molted together.

The swarm of recently hatched caterpillars in the next picture were found on a swamp milkweed leaf, so they should be Milkweed Tussock Moth caterpillars (Euchaetes egle). These don’t look like much now, but later they grow into flamboyantly furry caterpillars.

Lastly, we have our largest butterfly, the Giant Swallowtail (Papilio cresphontes). I was following it for some time, taking pictures, and here it was nicely photo-bombed by a Common Eastern Bumblebee (Bombus impatiens):

Readers’ wildlife photos

August 5, 2026 • 8:15 am

We have only a few batches left, and I am baffled about why few submissions are coming in. Please, if you have photos and appreciate this site, send me some good ones. Thanks!

Today’s photos come from Marcel van Oijen in the Netherlands. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

A Dutch Garden in Summertime

Marcel van Oijen

This summer we spent two weeks in the Netherlands, looking after the house of Nellie and Roel who count as both family and close friends. The following nine pictures were taken in their garden in the small town of Woudenberg, in the central Dutch province of Utrecht. Even though the Netherlands are just 700 km away from us (we live in Scotland on the opposite side of the North Sea), temperatures were about ten degrees higher there which made for much more varied wildlife.

This is a Willow Emerald damselfly (Chalcolestes viridis), recognisable from its brownish eyes. We never see damselflies or dragonflies in our garden here, so this was a huge and pleasant surprise:

Small White butterfly (Pieris rapae). Very common on both sides of the pond:

Vagrant Darter dragonfly (Sympetrum vulgatum). The species can be identified from its yellow-black legs, and its overall yellow colour tells us it’s a female;

Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta). A very common butterfly also here in Scotland:

Another Pieris butterfly, a Green-veined White (Pieris napi). I find the various Whites often difficult to photograph because they are so restless, but here they took their time feeding, maybe because the heat was too much even for them, or the flowers contained more nectar than usual?:

This European Garden Spider (Araneus diadematus) was a joy to follow during our days in the garden, when it was making or repairing its web, or scurrying toward the foliage whenever I got too close. Here it is wrapping up some prey (a hoverfly perhaps) for dinner later.

The sky was not really this featureless white, but I overexposed this picture of a Blue Tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) by two stops to make the picture look somewhat like a Chinese print:

And here is its larger cousin, a Great Tit (Parus major), with tiny prey:

We finish with one of the most common hoverflies in Europe, a Marmalade Hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus). This photo was taken while sitting at the breakfast table in the garden, where they would be hovering near the same flowers every morning, so I could focus the camera first and then simply wait for one of them to appear in the right spot:

The latest from Botany Pond

July 30, 2026 • 8:15 am

All is well on Botany Pond. The four ducklings abide, and are growing, healthy, and eating well. Miss Duck is still a great mother, though every few days, when the ducklings are sleeping on a rock, she’ll fly away for 45 minutes or so. Where does she go? Is she just exercising the need for airspeed? I often wait anxiously by the Pond for her return, and feed her as a reward for returning.

In a first of all mother hens I’ve tended, Miss Duck is afraid or wary of turtles, quacking softly when one approaches and feinting towards them with her bill. They do not notice her, and she apparently hasn’t learned that they’re harmless.

Here are a few snaps.

First, a predator nearby! I sent the out-of-focus photo of this raptor to two friends, both of whom identified it as a young Cooper’s Hawk (Astur cooperii). It was only about twenty feet from the brood lounging on the rock. Miss Duck quacked at it, but she made no attempt to flee.  One friend, an ornithologist, said this:

That hawk is a curious case because I think it has a mix of two year old (gray) and yearling (brown) feathers plus I am guessing it it partially leucistic (all the white bits). Based on shape I suspect Cooper’s hawks and they are serious bird killers so a duckling is a distinct possibility for its dinner. For a Cooer’s hawk the eye is also very pale and I wonder if that is also part of being leucistic?

Of course I chased it away; it’s out of focus because I was nervous when I photographed it.  I haven’t seen it in the past three days, but I think there’s a nest of these guys (or perhaps of red-tailed hawks) supposedly in the Quad nearby. The “serious bird killers” part disturbs me. Fingers crossed. Yes, hawks gotta eat, but not my ducklings! In all the years I’ve tended ducks, we haven’t lost any to predators, though one disappeared from a brood a few years ago.

The hawk looks intent, but of course raptors always look intent.

A few more photos of the brood resting. Look at the leg sticking out from the duckling on the right!

They are starting to look more like adult ducks, though there’s a long way to go (they won’t be flying until mid-September at the earliest).  Another leg is sticking out in the photo below.  They also have pointy tails and their heads are getting smaller relative to their bodies.  Note that they’re well fed!

The stripe through the eye on both adults and ducklings intrigues me, and I can understand it only as a way to camouflage the eye—an indicator of the head that predators may use.  I asked Grok, which emitted this answer:

  • The eye is often a conspicuous, shiny target. A strong horizontal dark stripe through it blurs or conceals its exact location from a distance, making it harder for aerial or ground predators to lock onto the head.
  • Combined with the mottled brown body plumage, the stripe acts as disruptive coloration: it interrupts the smooth outline of the head so the bird blends better into reeds, grasses, mud, or water edges.
  • This is especially critical for nesting females (who sit exposed for weeks) and for ducklings, which are highly vulnerable right after hatching. Sources specifically note that the ducklings’ eye stripes provide excellent camouflage in the wild.

Mom et brood resting on the edge of the pond in a shady area (it was hot two days ago).  Note that Miss Duck also has the eye stripe:

Finally, the pond is now full of dragonflies, and although Miss Duck tries to catch them, they are too fast for her. I’ve seen a duck catch a dragonfly only once. I don’t know the species of this one, but perhaps Mark Sturtevant will oblige:

Readers’ wildlife photos

July 2, 2026 • 8:30 am

Send in your photos if you got ’em, please!

Today’s photos continue the series taken by reader Ephraim Heller in Namibia. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Today I continue my series on a May-June 2026 visit to Namibia. I’m organizing the posts by habitat, in the order of our visits, so that you get a sense of the ecosystems. Today’s post features Damaraland, a 48,000 km² region in the northwest of the country.

Damaraland is not a formal administrative region, but a geographic and cultural designation. It is a jumble of granite kopjes, basalt plateaus, flat-topped mountains, broad gravel plains, and eroded canyon systems. Like much of Namibia, it is desert. Here is an aerial view, taken from the window of a small airplane:

Life is sparse here. A handful of ephemeral rivers cross Damaraland, cutting westward from the interior highlands to the Skeleton Coast along the Atlantic Ocean. These rivers flow above ground for only a few days per year following significant inland rainfall, but each bed sits atop an alluvial aquifer that retains water from flood events for months to years. This subsurface water sustains a few trees, shrubs, and animals along the riverbeds. Here’s another aerial view showing the path of an ephemeral river:

By far the coolest critter I found was the longleg armoured corncricket (Acanthoplus longipes), which has superpowers. It is a large, flightless katydid brandishing big, spiny legs and a heavily armored (American spelling) pronotum. When attacked, individuals autohaemorrhage, shooting a jet of toxic hemolymph from the leg joints toward attackers. I wish I had a superpower like that:

Naturally, any creature with such a magnificent superpower fluoresces under UV light:

Frankly, the rest of this post is anticlimactic. What could possibly beat a longleg armoured corncricket? Not a pretty brush jewel beetle (Julodis humeralis):

A Namib rock agama (Agama planiceps) doesn’t beat a longleg armoured corncricket, not even when it is chowing down on a bug:

One night I went on a walk to see what would fluoresce under my UV light. I found this gecko. Sure, fluorescence is cool and I wish I could do it, but does this gecko autohaemorrhage? No, it does not. The folks at iNaturalist couldn’t identify it – apparently one needs the visible spectrum to make a positive ID:

This is tentatively identified as an orange lesser-thicktail scorpion (Uroplectes planimanus), another critter with the minor UV-fluorescence superpower. Interestingly, researchers do not know why scorpions evolved fluorescence.

Now for the birds. Sadly, they have no superpowers at all. Our lodge had a water feature that was the only surface water for miles around. I spent hours watching the birds bathe and drink.

A violet-backed starling (Cinnyricinclus leucogaster). The color is produced not by pigment but by thin-film interference: stacks of hollow melanosomes in the feather barbules refract light at specific wavelengths. The male can modulate its apparent coloration through posture:

A black-fronted bulbul (Pycnonotus nigricans):

A Namaqua dove (Oena capensis):

A red-headed finch (Amadina erythrocephala):

The southern masked weaver (Ploceus velatus). Egg color varies among females, allegedly as a defense against brood parasitism by the Diederik cuckoo. Because the cuckoo cannot know egg color before entering the nest, color polymorphism in the weaver population raises the probability of parasite detection and egg ejection. Not a superpower, but cool nonetheless. I just like the bokeh in this photo:

Finally, the requisite Namibian desert night sky photos:

Reader’s wildlife photos

June 23, 2026 • 8:15 am

Why is this feature like lox and a schmear? A: Because it’s on a roll. (Sort of.) I now have a total of four sets of photos in the queue, one of which I’ll post today. But please send your good photos, and a warm handshake to those who have done so.  I hope people realize that readers who send in good add a unique feature for this website: high-quality and delightful pictures of nature. Do compliment the photographer if you like their photos.

Today we have pictures from Ephraim Heller, documenting his recent trip to Namibia. (More will be coming.) Ephraim’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Today I begin a series on a May-June 2026 visit to Namibia. I’m organizing the posts by habitat, in the order of our visits, so that you get a sense of the ecosystems.

The Namib Desert is the oldest desert on earth, with conditions that have persisted for 55 – 80 million years. At ~80,950 square km (31,250 sq mi), it is far and away the largest desert I have visited. It stretches ~2,000 km (1,200 mi) along southwest Africa’s Atlantic coast, including the entire length of Namibia. There is essentially no rain at all near the coast (2 mm/year average), but in places there is coastal fog that is the primary source of water for the desert plants. The stable climate over millions of years has resulted in high endemism. Of the ~3,500 documented species in the Namib, more than 1,000 are endemics.1-2. On the drive from the capital, Windhoek, visitors pass through Solitaire. It consists of a fuel station, a bakery and café, a general store, a small lodge, and a yard decorated with old vehicles. The nearest real town is hundreds of kilometers distant. When vehicles broke down, cars and trucks were simply left. Some of the collection includes American classics from the mid-twentieth century:

While having lunch at a picnic table in Solitaire, I observed several yellow mongooses (Cynictis penicillata) playing. Technically, Solitaire is semi-desert, so there are a few shrubs for the mongoose. They often share burrow systems with the local ground squirrels (Xerus inauris), which confused me as I tried to decide if I was seeing mongooses or ground squirrels. This is a mongoose:

Our destination in the Namib desert was Sossusvlei, where the sand dunes are among the highest in the world. “Dune 7” dune, the tallest, is 388 m (1,273 ft) in height. Vlei is the Afrikaans word for “marsh,” while sossus is Nama for “no return” or “dead end”.  The area is the drainage basin for the ephemeral Tsauchab river. The Namib Sand Sea, of which the Sossusvlei dune field is a part, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The dunes began forming around five million years ago. Sand from the Orange River was carried west into the Atlantic, swept north by the Benguela Current, then driven back inland by the prevailing south-southwest winds. Over millions of years the sand accumulated into a dune field ~32,000 sq km (12,400 sq mi) in extent. The sand is iron-oxide coated quartz, and younger sand near the base of dunes is paler while older sand higher up is a deeper reddish-orange, due to greater oxidation. The colors in these photos are real, and not simply me going wild with the saturation slider in my photo editing software. For scale, note the full-grown trees at the base of the dune in the first photo.

About a kilometer walk across the sand lies a small clay pan named Deadvlei (meaning “dead marsh”) where reside camelthorn trees (Vachellia erioloba) that have been dead for 600 – 900 years. There has been no water here since the fourteenth century! The combination of extreme dryness and intense heat inhibits microbial activity so thoroughly that the wood is preserved.

Gemsbok (Oryx gazella) and springbok (Antidorcas marsupialis) antelope are the primary large mammals of the Namib. Gemsbok can survive for extended periods without drinking free-standing water, meeting their requirements through vegetation. Here is a gemsbok in its habitat:

Here is a herd of springbok in their environment:

Toktokkie beetles (Onymacris unguicularis) are a group of darkling beetles with over 200 species in Namibia, and 20 in the Namib desert. We saw them throughout Namibia. I don’t know the species of this individual, but some species engage in fog-harvesting: when Atlantic fog rolls in, beetles climb to the crests of dunes and orient head-downward, body inclined away from the wind. Water condenses on the elytra, runs along ridges on the beetle’s back, and reaches the mouthparts. A beetle can take in water equivalent to ~40% of its body mass from a single fog event.

The garden locust or tree locust (Acanthacris ruficornis), is widespread across sub-Saharan Africa. Tt is technically a grasshopper:

Namaqua doves (Oena capensis) are ubiquitous, but I think they are pretty. They are the smallest doves on the African continent:

The Kalahari tree skink (Trachylepis spilogaster). I had no idea that some skinks are arboreal:

The extreme dryness and very low population density of Namibia make it one of the prime sites for astronomical observatories and night sky photographers: