by Dhamaka
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"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"........ Albert Einstein
My new dance photography blog, DanceTog is here
My formal G20Voice blog is here
"When you're standing on a comfortable rug, you have to expect it to be pulled from under your feet sometimes"
........ Ben Moor
My homesite
My flickr
C_E on twitter
Images on twitter
CyclistOnChemo on twitter
My facebook
This is my personal blog, not a venue for saleable images. In fact, because it's here that I share things that are important to me with the members of the moblog community, photo quality's not my priority. Events, occasions, achievements, thoughts, trips and experiments - you'll find them all here. Contact me for the development version of my photo portfolio, for a selection of saleable images or visit my dance photography blog or my website for cuttings. And remember that all photos remain my copyright unless I've specifically said otherwise.
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"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle I no longer despair for the future of the human race"
........ H G Wells
"All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better"
........ Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Luck favours the prepared mind"
........ Louis Pasteur
"Never to get lost is not to live, not to know how to get lost brings you to destruction, and somewhere in the terra incognita in between lies a life of discovery."
........ Rebecca Solnit
"Give, give, give -- what is the point of having experience, knowledge or talent if I don't give it away? Of having stories if I don't tell them to others? Of having wealth if I don't share it? I don't intend to be cremated with any of it! It is in giving that I connect with others, with the world and with the divine."
........ Isabel Allende
"Don't ask yourself what the world needs - ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
........ Harold Thurman Whitman
"The real voyage of discovery consists not of seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes...."
........ Marcel Proust
"It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them.. you have no such accurate remembrance of a country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle...."
........ Ernest Hemingway
"Ambition leads me not only father than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it is possible for man to go."
........ James Cook
"The grand show is enternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapour is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls."
........ John Muir
"The bicycle is the most civilised conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart."
........ Iris Murdoch
"Photography for me is not looking, it's feeling. If you can't feel what you're looking at, then you're never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your picture...."
........ Don McCullin
Been counting visitors since some time in August 2008
This takes me back.. Not a clue what they are called but used to see them regularly in my mothers back garden!
I recall they always came in pairs.. Black smudge on the bottom of your shoe perhaps ?
Beth - I'm with you there
Carpe - a relief to know it's native
Hotdog - on a walk by the woods
Ooh! According to Collins gem guide to insects this beast is the Devil's Coach-horse (Staphylinus olens)! According to the book it is a rove beetle that is fairly common and 'emerges at night to hunt a variety of invertebrates' including a good number of slugs.
Spiderbaby beat me to it. That's a devil's coach horse alright, big cousin of the thrips or thunderflies you get in warm weather in the summer. I think that they can also squirt foul-smelling liquid, although I've never experienced it :) [edit] yes, Wikipedia confirms it
Wow! That's some big brother thunderfly! Or sister perhaps - abdomen is more pointy than the one in my book, though there is no gender specified on the drawing. Hmmm.
Its a Devils Coach Horse (in the uk anyway). Dont know it latin name.
Not poisonous (but I am not an expert :) although it does nip apparently. Usually too small to do any damage but if you meet a 6 foot specimen ....... :)
thank you
I kept an eye out and this was the only one but it was daytime so maybe its partner was asleep
Spiderbaby beat me to it. Fantastic looking critters, aren't they? Great capture, D.
:)
Sprocket - more like a charcoal burner's pencil
Looker - ...... now I hear they eat slugs I'm wondering whether to go back, find him and a mate and transport them to my rooftop garden.
Wow! Don't know how I missed this one, what a lovely bug! Glad folks stepped up with an ID....think once we're moved I'm getting a UK bug guide too, since I see so many good bug pics here on moblog:uk. :D
Boet - you guys are only next door, I should imagine we have similar insects
Midlife - Jam jars are wonderful insect-transporting things but I don't have the time to go back and search for them anyway
Silar - good to see you. Hope the new job's going well
Just caught two in my lounge tonight. i thought they were scoripans at first. google it to a devils coach horse beetle, thank god.
I call it ICK and consider you lucky you escaped its dreaded smelly stench!