Memos from Bugshot 2012

Sunday, August 26th, 2012

Silver Argiope (Argiope argentata)

After realizing how much I was hearing this year I had heard last year in St. Louis and forgotten, I decided to write a few things down.

Art

Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.

Get low.

Use a polarizing filter to get rich colors in landscape photography.

Biology

Some ants have stingers, not just fangs.

Toads have been recategorized. There are no more Bufos left in North America!

Butterflies aren’t even a clade. They’re just different families of moths that have evolved along similar lines.

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#848 Florida Scrubjay at Bugshot 2012

Saturday, August 25th, 2012

OK. This is the second to last day at Bugshot and a hurricane is coming. I’m staying at the Archbold Biological Station, home to one of the major, possibly the largest breeding colony of the endangered Florida Scrubjay. I’m told they come to the parking lot here but I still haven’t seen one. So this morning early I took off across the railroad tracks before breakfast and promised myself I wasn’t turning around until I found a scrub jay. And I was not disappointed:

Florida Scrub Jay in sand
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