Today, Gerald the stick insect died after laying a tiny clutch of three eggs.
Here she is next to my forearm.
Her cerci were at my wrist and her antennae ended a little past my elbow.
On to happier subjects.
Sticky is peacefully pupating (I don't want to remove him from his hiding place to get a picture), and Yoda is as gluttonous as ever; he must have devoured twenty leafhoppers last night alone!
On July 5, I helped my Nana with yardwork at her farmhouse and encountered several different critters, including a dead nymph of a Megaphasma denticrus (which, alas, I did not take a picture of). I did see the largest non-banana-spider orbweaver I had ever seen: a Giant Lichen Orbweaver, Araneus bicentenarius.
Here it is in the bottom of a glass cup. Its abdomen was about the size of a quarter.
A. bicentenarius was not the only green spider I encountered; I also ran into a Green Lynx Spider (of the Oxyopedae family).
Oddly enough, I also found a lone Io Moth caterpillar on a Japanese Magnolia (they are normally very social animals). As Sticky was pupating, I decided to bring "Spiky" home.
Before you look at the next picture, try to find the cleverly concealed bug in the picture. I am trying to see the difficultly level of such pictures, just for fun and possibly for future use in presentations and such.
Please reply in the comments if you found it without cheating.
Ta-dah! Its a leafhopper! It appears to be mimicking the lichen on the Japanese Magnolia.
I have also been trying to pin insects in dramatic positions. Here is a sample of my first photo shoot: a battle between a Reddish-Brown Stag Beetle and a Lego Battle Droid.
And, as a final random addition to this hodgepodge post, a slow-mo video of a plume moth taking flight.
Since I do not want to make this post overly long, I will work on posting more Costa Rica pictures later today. In the future, I plan on making some pages about Mississippi insects and spiders, to which I will regularly add.
Farewell.
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