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Orbatid mites, also called beetle mites, hitching a ride on a white-spotted long-horned beetle. We use horses, donkeys, and ostriches to hitch a ride on, taking us from one location to another.  Such relationships are also common in the animal world between different species.  Orbatid mites, also called beetle mites, belong in this category in that they may attach themselves to certain beetles for a ride.  But, instead of it being just one or two of them, as is often the case, there may be dozens or even hundreds.  From the outside, it looks like the beetle may be parasitized, but the strange thing is, it isn't.  It turns out that this is a commensal relationship. Commensalism is a relationship between two species where one benefits (in this case, the mite) while the other remains unharmed (the beetle).  Other than weighing the beetle down a bit, which really doesn't hurt it much at all, there is no harm.  Some beetles get covered from front to back....

Old farm buildings near Cypress Hills, Alberta Look at the images above and below; both are from the same photo, the above one is how I originally took it, and the other is a significant crop of just the second structure. Crop of second structure from the above image.  Sharpening added. Which do you prefer?  They both have their own appeal, and I could see how an argument could be made for either one.  For me, the answer comes down to what the purpose of the image is.   My general preference is to see the environment surrounding the subject.  It gives context to the location and hints at what is or was occurring.  The top image provides this far better than the lower image.  The advantage of the lower image is that you get more detail of the structure, and the patina of the wood is often pleasing to one's eye.  One of the ways around this is to make a LARGE print - my pigment 17" wide printer at home can make 36" long prints, and I love large...

I photographed this lady in Astoria, Oregon.  She was working on a loom, making a fabric at the time. There are those who begrudgingly go to work, who hate it, but are stuck because it pays the bills and they are not likely to find anything better.  Then there are those who love it because it is what they love to do; going to work is exciting and soulful work.  The difference between the first group and the second often relates to planning and opportunity working in tandem. The planning part has to occur when you actually have some idea of who you are - what defines you in terms of your interests and capabilities.  Many people don't know this until either late high school or, more likely, until sometime in their twenties.  For me, I graduated from high school with a passion for animals of all kinds.  My passion was "critters."  I went to the University of Calgary to get a BSc in Zoology.  I didn't know what would happen after that, but it was cert...

Waterfalls and plunge pool - evidence of erosion and weathering I used to be confused by the two terms - weathering and erosion.  The reason, I suppose, is that they are often mentioned together; you don't typically have one without the other.  And, although related, they couldn't be more different. Weathering is the process by which material is broken down.  This usually involves rock, but could also refer to soil or chemicals that break down or dissolve.  The forces of weathering are water, wind, changes in temperature and pressure, chemistry, and anything else that causes material to break away from a mass. Erosion either follows or is concurrent with weathering.  Erosion is simply the movement of material.  The forces of erosion are water, wind, gravity, and anything else that physically causes stuff to move.   The entire surface of the Earth has been shaped because of weathering and erosion.  Glaciers, waves, mass movement, cave formatio...

My last blog on song sparrows was almost 4 years ago ( variations in song sparrows ).  I wrote it about variations in song sparrows over a large area.  I am redoing the blog because I have more additions to the photos - from four different locations in the northwestern quadrant of North America.   Apparently, there are some 24 subspecies of song sparrow in North America.  Continental variants tend to be more lightly coloured, as you can see from the Kelowna and Lloydminster birds I photographed above.  Coastal variants tend to be more darkly shaded, as you can see by the Nanaimo and Alaska subspecies.   Not only does the feathering differ in the subspecies, the songs vary regionally as well.  They seem to have commonalities in that their songs are divided into 3 or 4 parts, often starting out with a pair of chirps followed by a series of notes, a warbling rattle, and possibly a soft finish.  You can listen to four different songs by clic...

Adult blister beetle eats and lays eggs on flowers.  Larvae parasitize ground-nesting solitary bees. Most of us have no idea about the life cycle of an unknown insect - some are relatively simple, but others are far different than what we could imagine.  Blister beetles are one such insect. All beetles undergo complete metamorphosis, meaning that they proceed from egg to a larval stage quite different from the adult.  The larva undergoes several moults (each stage is called an instar) to finally pupate, where it casts off its last moult (called an ecdysis) and emerges as an adult.  The adult goes on to mate and lay eggs.  Nothing too different about that, is there? N. nigripennis , the blister beetle shown in the above photo, eats flowers and pollen as an adult.  It also mates and lays eggs on the flowers themselves.  The larva is very mobile and searches for a ground-nesting solitary bee to visit the flower it is on.  Then, it attaches itself to ...

I found this northern scorpion by looking under a log at a campsite in Northern California. Although there are scorpions in Canada (Milk River Valley, Alberta), the only ones I have ever found were in the States.  One in Arizona (American giant scorpion), and the other is the one I photographed above.  I found both of them under surface structures (log above and a rock for the first one), which is where you will find most scorpions during the day.  The strange thing is that scorpions do not typically come out during the day; they are nocturnal predators and leave their burrows or hiding places only in the dark.  Hollywood often portrays the Scorpiones as desert-dwelling creatures that wander during the heat of midday, looking for some hapless passerby to clumsily fall into their path.   Northern scorpions have stingers that are capable of delivering a painful hit to humans, but little more than what one would get from a bee.  Their weapon is for incapa...