Common Five-lined Skink (Plestiodon Fasciatus), Taken April 23, 2025, In Georgia, US

Hooded Warbler (Setophaga citrina), male, taken April 1, 2025

Quite the uncommon visitor showed his face at the feeders yesterday! I've only seen hooded warblers once before: a small group traveling south last fall. Males of this species can be distinguished from females by the black band around their face, which resembles a hood! Females can look much like other warblers such as Pine Warblers (Setophaga pinus). They can be distinguished from male pine warblers by their olive backs and easily distinguished from the brown females by color!

Blue-faced Meadowhawk (Sympetrum ambiguum), male, taken September 5, 2024, in Georgia, US

In terms of dragonfly season here, these guys fly really late, right about at the end. I think this was actually one of the last ones I saw last year—he was definitely the last I photographed. What a fiery way to end the season, though! This guy is gorgeous, and he posed very well for me! Sometimes I swear bugs want me to take their pictures, and who am I to say no to such a handsome guy?

American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos), taken May 20, 2025, in Georgia, US

A lovely crow yelling back to their partner who sits a few branches away. These two flew overhead and stayed a while to (I assume) yell about me from the trees. I think they were sandwiched between me on the ground and a hawk circling a little ways off behind them, and they clearly had a lot to say about it! They circled around above me a few times before continuing in the direction they were headed, and after they left the hawk started yelling instead. You can never have quiet in the woods!

Coppery Leafhopper (Jikradia olitoria), nymph, taken May 18, 2025, in Georgia, US

Some out of focus images of my son because I love him so much.. I saw him again yesterday on the same plant, so he must like it where he is lol. Even after seeing tons of these guys, I still can't get over how cute they are, especially as nymphs! Their large, charismatic eyes, bright colors, and little dances have captivated me, I fear.

Parasitic Wasp (Family Platygastridae), taken April 2, 2025, in Georgia, US

A tiny wasp! This girlie is...very small. I happened to see her land whilst waiting for a nomad bee to resurface from underneath the leaflitter (he never did). She sat still for a long time, so I took the opportunity to try to get some pictures! These are pretty good for her size, especially considering how shaky my hands are lol. I found a different wasp later and the leaf she was on was moving so much that I just had to shoot complete blind and pray I got something in focus. It was terrible. Compared to that, this wasp was an angel!

when u are holding a hammer everything looks like a nail -> when u are holding a point and shoot camera every sight looks incomparably ephemerally beautiful

Globular Springtails (Order Symphypleona), taken March 20, 2025, in Georgia, US

In order of appearance: Ptenothrix curvilineata (1), undescribed Dicyrtoma sp. (2), Ptenothrix marmorata (3), undescribed/unknown Ptenothrix sp. (4)

I've been in a globular springtail phase for a couple months now, and the past few days I've been doubling down in my efforts to find as many as possible. I spent a couple hours yesterday digging through dead wood and found and photographed 40 individuals! I love the diversity of patterning in this group—they're absolutely tiny, but so so gorgeous.

P. marmorata is definitely the most common customer in my part of the woods, but I found lots of the 4th individual as well. That guy is a bit of a strange situation, since it might actually be a regional color morph variant of P. marmorata! It doesn't look much like it, but animals are weird and this stuff happens sometimes. Hopefully we find out what it is soon!

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher (Polioptila caerulea), male, taken March 21, 2025, in Georgia, US

A fun new birding lifer for me! This guy was a pain to photograph, though that's only partially because he was flitting around constantly and mostly because the sun was making it hard to see if my camera was in focus or not :'). I got some nice pictures, though, and a video of him singing I have to review. This bird's song is so quiet that I'm not even sure my camera picked it up over the ambiance. It's like a whisper!

Downy Woodpeckers (Dryobates pubescens), juvenile males, taken May 27, 2024, in Georgia, US

Preparing for this spring and staving off the baby bird withdrawals by posting all of my spring 2024 stuff... Downy fledgelings are the cutest! The babies always look lost, slightly to extremely ruffled, and love looking cutely into the camera because they don't know what the fuck that thing pointing at them is!!

A reminder: if you were taught that mosquitoes in general are useless to the environment and could be eliminated “without consequence”, then you were taught incorrectly. People still regularly comment this silly notion on my posts with absolute confidence. Our goal is reducing risk to humans, NOT eliminating the dangerous animal altogether.

You don’t have to like irritating, gross, or dangerous animals (most people do not), but if you are ever arguing for the extinction of an entire animal species try to remember the natural world is unfathomably complex in ways none of us can predict.