The Smaller Majority

Sweat the small stuff

Recently I have been processing some of the 18,000+ photos I took during a recent trip to Mozambique, and yesterday one image caught my eye. It shows a large ground beetle carrying a dead cicada. I shot it rather casually one night in front of my tent in Gorongosa, and immediately forgot about it. But…

Mozambique Diary: How to kill an assassin

I often lament the fact that humans are freakishly gargantuan next to nearly all other animals, and thus unable to appreciate the beauty and complexity of the majority of smaller life forms that share the world with us. Yet, at the same time I am thankful that we do not need to contend with the…

Only in America

I first learned about the existence of periodical cicadas when I was a young boy, still living in z Old Country. The idea that an insect could develop underground for 17 years was crazy enough, but the fact that after all that time every individual within the population emerges at once in a synchronized, massive…

When life gives you lemons

Last weekend I drove with a couple of friends to Delaware to watch what surely must be one of the most amazing natural spectacles in North America, the annual mass spawning of Atlantic horseshoe crabs. I do it almost every year, and over time the eight hour drive from Boston to Delaware Bay has become…

BugShot 2013 in Belize

There are still a few slots available for BugShot 2013, a great opportunity to learn macrophotography in the rainforest of Belize from Alex Wild, Thomas Shahan, John Abbott, and yours truly. It is going to be a great event, at a fantastic location. You will not only discover the carefully guarded secrets of some of…

Mozambique Diary: Somebody has to clean this mess

A friend of mine once compared holding a dung beetle in your hand to kissing a dog on the snout – both feel kind of good, until you think of the last thing they have probably been rubbing against. At least with dogs there is some room for other options, but there is no such…