I’ve been working on a post about seed beetles for a while and ended up being held up as I looked around for a beetle to photograph. I finally found one and expected it to be an easy photo shoot, but boy was I wrong! These beetles play dead, so half of the photos are of the beetles lying on their backs with all their legs tucked in. Most of the rest are of the beetles running very quickly away from me and the camera. Even though this isn’t the most perfect photograph ever, I was thrilled that I caught this little maneuver:
Seed beetle
This was snapped right as the beetle transitioned from playing dead on its back to running full-bore toward the edge of the counter. I kind of love it, imperfections and all, because it sort of summarizes the whole photo shoot What frustrating little beetles!
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The Dragonfly Woman 
Looks like he’s dancing!
It kinda does, doesn’t it?
Frustrating insects….Tortoise beetles are up there too. They are a great way to get good pictures of leaves.
Ha! I am very experienced in photographs of “Former location of interesting insect” leaves!
Ha ha! I’ve only come across one in my life and it was comatose on a leaf on a really hot day, but I STILL managed to miss out on getting a good shot! Granted, that was something like 6 or 7 years ago now. I knew far less about what I was doing then. Yeah… That’s going to be my excuse for managing to get 4 blurry shots of a perfectly still beetle… :)
Bruchids -or are they Bruchines now – are really among the flightiest beetles that I drag into my studio – precooled, and then they still take off. A Kukulcania has taken up residence in my window frame -she grabs themthetherethere.
I’m glad you’ve had the same experience! What a huge pain! For such tiny beetles they are surprisingly difficult to work with.
Sorry about the stutter – I suddenly couldn’t see my typing in the assigned box anymore.