Wow!  I can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve blogged!  You wouldn’t believe the amount of life crap that seems to keep welling up recently, but I DO intend to come back to blogging as soon as I have just a little more time.  Until I can get a more substantial post up, here’s a quick Well-Nigh Wordless Wednesday…

Last week I had the opportunity to teach a bunch of pre-school teachers about the Lost Ladybug Project during an educator workshop offered by the early childhood people at my museum.  The woman running the workshop requested that I bring live ladybugs for my presentation, so I went to the best source of I know of at this time of year: the trailer where my office is located.  Collecting the ladybugs couldn’t have been easier!  I just set out a jar and asked my 5 coworkers to deposit any live ladybugs they found.  24 hours later, I had 52 ladybugs for the teachers to attempt to identify!  They were a hit, but it seemed wrong to release my beetles before photographing them for Lost Ladybug considering that I was trying to convince these teachers to do exactly the same thing.  So, I took them home, set up a little photography studio on my dining table, and started shooting.  Most of my ladybug photos are pretty terrible because I take them with cameras that aren’t suited to photographing small insects and I almost always have to rush through the photos anyway, but this time I was able to pull out the big guns and get some decent shots.  This was my favorite:

Asian Multicolored Ladybug, Harmonia axyridis

It might not be native (and it’s likely invasive), but it’s pretty darned cute anyway.

Hope you’re all doing well!

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