Eastern Eyed Click Beetle

The Eastern Eyed Click Beetle (Alaus oculatus), is about 2 inches long.

The "eyes" are not really his eyes. They are there to scare off predators. Their actual eyes are located at the base of his antennae.

Eyed Click Beetles get their name from their habit of fending off danger by turning on their back, then bending their head and pro-thorax backward and snapping open when straightening out. This produces a loud audible click.

Eyed Click Beetles can be found in the Eastern United States as far west as Texas.

Sawgrass Lake Park is located in St Petersburg, Florida. Visitors there can be reasonably sure of seeing American Alligators in the wild.

Honey Bees and Nest

During a walk on one of the trails at Boca Ciega Millennium Park in Seminole, my friends and I came upon this bees' nest high up in a tree.

You can imagine this was shot with a very, long lens. I'm allergic to bee stings, so I didn't want to aggravate these little buggers. All I could think of was that movie, "My Girl", with McCauly Culkin (spelling probably wrong).

I've never seen a nest with the honey combs sticking out of it before and thought this was kind of interesting. There must be thousands of bees on this thing! It's definitely a bee keeper's dream.

Honey anyone?

Settings used for this shot were F7.1 (my sharpest aperture) at 1/30th and ISO 100. Because I was using partial metering, and the yellows and sky were blowing out (according to my histogram), I used a compensation adjustment of -1 1/3 stops. The focal length was 194mm with my 55-250mm lens.

Spider Carrying Leaf

This spider was working really hard trying to carry this leaf up through his web. We watched him for a while and he eventually dropped the leaf.

This photo was taken 12/11/07 during an early morning walk through Sawgrass Lake Park in St Petersburg, FL.

Unfortunately, I'm unable to identify the species of this spider.

If you enjoy my blog and want to see more of my work, check out my website at http://LoyceHoodPhoto.com.

Thanks for looking,
Loyce