10 years ago
So, here we are. Ten years ago today I posted my first online insect pictures – a blurry fly, and a cecropia moth caterpillar:
At this point, we no longer even have the camera I used to take those pictures. Or the camera that replaced it. And I no longer use the camera that replaced that, although the lens is still in service.
And the year-and-a-half old toddler that used to bring me bugs like this while saying, “Take picture, Dada!”
is now 11. But she and her sister still keep me supplied with all sorts of things to photograph, and have contributed to the majority of the hundreds and hundreds of pictures posted here.
And now, this little project to photograph bugs has turned into this sprawling mass of almost 800 posts, and nearly as many distinct species. In the course of doing this, my entire family has gotten a good, solid knowledge of the local entomology that we never would have had otherwise, to the point that we are sort of locally famous in a small way. And I’ve gotten reasonably good at taking pictures (or, at least, taking pictures of small things, which is a bit different from taking pictures of landscapes and making portraits, but hey, we all have our specialties).
So anyway, it’s been a lot of fun, and I expect to keep doing it for a long time to come. I appreciate the 3,875 comments to date that are the primary evidence that someone is reading this thing. Of course, there have been 1,716,500 spam comments in that same time, but thankfully my spam filter means that I don’t have to read those.
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Congratulations on ten years of blogging! I stumbled across your blog one spring while trying to discover if the black and yellow waspy thing sunning itself on the fence was, as I suspected, a queen yellow jacket getting ready to complicate my life. The previous summer yellow jackets had moved into our compost bin, which I discovered the hard way, and I wasn’t looking forward to repeating the experience. I added your blog to my RSS feed right away and have rarely missed reading a post, although I don’t comment often. Thanks for your good work!
I have enjoyed your journey and look forward to the discoveries to come.
Have you thought about adding birds? Ninety-six percent of the terrestrial birds feed insects to their young. It’s fun to see how many species you can spot in your area and notice which ones breed there, are visitors, or just passing through.
Thanks, Anne and Carole!
I’ve thought about including birds from time to time, but normally the pictures don’t come out too well. They are typically too far away for my lens to resolve them properly, which isn’t too surprising considering I’m using a close-up macro lens 🙂
Thanks for posting interesting photos and facts. I don’t remember how I started coming, but I check in regularly!
Thanks Tim for the regular posts. I may not see the same critters in my neck of the woods, but you seem to relate all of them to you (as opposed to impersonal copy/pastes from elsewhere on the web) which keeps this blog interesting. Here’s to another 10 years.
Happy blogiversary! Well done keeping it going for 10 years.