upupa-epops's Favorites

About 4 cm long, on Silver Maple. Still alive, but its egg-laying days are over. Pulling back to get a wider shot, I noticed that its ovipositor was still stuck in the tree, but no longer attached to the wasp. I suspect it had finished egg-laying and refused to die in the humiliating position with its butt in the air. Noble.

First known wild observations and discovery of natural fluorescent in an old world mammal or any mammal outside of North and Central America, images of the Springhare taken in August 2019. Incredible to see it’s orange and pink glow firsthand, especially when it wasn’t expected! Accidental discovery whilst out photographing scorpions under UV light

Shot using a Nikon D850 Handheld with a Nitecore Chameleon C6 ( 365nm ) torch.

For anyone interested in February 2020 a Scientific journal was released by a American research group ( no relation to me ) about this UV trait and science behind it from research in museum & zoo specimens in the US.

There are a few more images, but you might be able to imagine photographing a rather skittish nocturnal creature on foot with a UV torch in one hand and a large DSLR in the other during a unexpected encounter whilst also trying to expose a camera correctly for UV light isn’t the easiest thing to do the split second.

Found 3 of these on the milkweed plants. Photo 1 is rotated 180 degrees. Photo 2 is as found upside down under a milkweed leaf. It was initially on the milkweed flower. It seemed to be taking nectar from the milkweed.

Mimetes stokoei

Mimetes stokoei thought to be probably extinct and hadn^t been seen for over 30 years. It popped up after a hot fire in 2000. The entire population went up in smoke in March 2011...

This is from the same patch as this earlier observation from 11 days ago:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/12687595

In this new observation, the seeds are clearly red, but the involucral bracts no longer appear to have dark-colored horns.

This is a total surprise. No record of any 13/17 year broods here. I presume this guy arrived on imported landscape plants from a 2020 emergence location. I have never heard a local annual cicada even remotely like this.