One of the Bobtails or Western Shinglebacks (Tiliqua rugosa rugosa) that lives in our Perth Hills garden showing off the blue tongue these skinks are known for #reptiles #ausreptiles #wildoz #inaturalist #nature

Goiter? #inaturalist #tortoise #reptile #physiology www.inaturalist.org/observations...

So photographs on Bluesky look really bad when zoomed. Are there any tricks to minimize the compression problem? Or should I just stop clicking on images? I've seen lots of conflicting advice. #photography #macrophotography

Lichen covered in ice. From a trip a few years ago to Lake Mohonk, New Paltz, NY.

Wonderful photographs by Svein Erik Larsen of denticidal capsules of some Silene species. Useful for identifying plants in the fall and winter. #silene #inaturalist #botany www.flickr.com/photos/svein...

Thinking about buying a macro lens for insect photography? Along with @ageofarthropods.bsky.social we have been testing many options! Our results are summarized in 2 blog posts in the field www.insectid.org/post/macro-l... and in the lab www.insectid.org/post/lab-tes...

I wasn't that excited about this stock standard photo of a darkling beetle (Eleodes goryi), until I noticed the parasitic tachinid fly egg attached above the insect's midleg. This beetle is on borrowed time.

Dung beetles know where they want to go. They roll, push or shove their dung ball & every few seconds they stop pushing to climb on top of the ball to make sure they are going in the right direction. This dung beetle male is just climbing down after a look around. More info in alt text #insects

🤔 Largely unnoticed by visitors to Ripon Cathedral, Henry Wilson’s 1913 repoussé pulpit gleams with Anglo-Saxon saints and burnished light. 📸 I worked hard here to capture how his craft bridges the past and present, the material and the spiritual. A real hidden gem. #thread

#MolluscMonday: a small part of the 'Ammonite Pavement' in the Lower Jurassic Blue Lias Formation at Lyme Regis. Pound coin for scale (if you can spot it).

Roman glass cups with colourful enamel decoration of animals from the Roman arena. AD 200s. Found in richly-furnished graves in Denmark. National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen. 📷 by me #FindsFriday #Archaeology

Does anyone know where the Iguanodon footprints found in the Greensand near Arthur Conan Doyle's house in May 1909, and which ended up on display in his billard room, are today? I suspect they remained with the family, but there are a lot of potential museums they could have ended up in.

😿 iNaturalist is down. I've grown accustomed to starting my day with a good nature fix. #inaturalist

Anyone know what's going on with this dead fly? I think it was on grapevine. #insects #entomology #wtf

Bat, Frederick II, De arte venandi cum avibus, c.1310. 🦇 #Gothtober #BatWeek #31daysofhalloween

Varves in Castile Formation: seasonal wet/dry variations recorded by alternation between gypsum (white) + calcite (dark) laminae. ⚒️

Some spiders can fly! OK, not really fly, but spiders in the genus Selenops are able to glide. If they fall from a tree top they are able to steer and even right themselves in order to make their way back to a tree trunk. #Arachtober (Selenops sp.) Yasuni National Park, Ecuador 2018

Auriscalpium vulgare - Earpick Fungus. One of my favourite mushrooms. #FungiFriends #ConeOfTheDay

The Gold-ringed cat snake floating and swimming along a forest stream in Singapore. Beautiful and hypnotic

Thoroughly enjoying checking out the spectacular folded and overturned Carboniferous-aged turbidities near Millook Haven on the NE Cornish coast. Lovely sedimentary structures - graded bedding, slumps, load casts, flutes, all subsequently squeezed into tight chevron folds ::chef’s kiss:: ⚒️🧪🌍

Timeline cleanser: Banded Iron formation, Soudan, MN We took a drive over there today. I adore interesting #geology

These little tools are apple scoops. They date from the 1800s and are made of sheep bone. They were common in apple-growing districts. The marrow has been hollowed out to allow the user to scrape off pieces of apple if they had few teeth and couldn’t afford dentures.

A long-held myth about a mosquito evolving in the London Underground has been debunked! 🦟 The insect gained notoriety in the Second World War, when it fed on Londoners seeking shelter in the rail tunnels during the Blitz. Discover its true origin story.👇 www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/new...

Many of the articles on the mosquitoes that were recently found in Iceland mention wine ropes. Here's a video by @savebutterflies.bsky.social showing how to make them. #entomology #insects #wine www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZcj...

Fernandina marine iguanas (Amblyrhynchus cristatus cristatus). Always kind of low energy but particularly so when I visited, in 2015, because El Niño had reduced the abundance of red and green algae near the shore. #ElNino #reptiles #galapagos #iguanas #weather #algae

This lovely friend is a Burrowing Wolf Spider, introduced to me by @apsciencebylyn.bsky.social in northern Florida. (Geolycosa sp.) #Arachtober

Here's a fabulous arachnid for the feed tonight, a Giant Velvet Mite. Their bright colors appear to be aposematic, warning potential predators of their unpleasant taste and smell. (Dinothrombium sp.) Portal, AZ 2025 #Arachtober

Sunrise over Daphne Minor and Daphne Major, treeless tuff-cone islands in the Galápagos archipelago. #galapagos #islands #volcanoes #ecuador #ocean

Dicyrtomina ornata, a globular springtail. The setae-like structures on the rump are brittle, hollow tubes made of wax. #collembola #springtails #dicyrtomidae #arthropods

Blog post on some research in the lab thanks to @entsocamerica.bsky.social. This is undergrad Liz Wynne's big discovery of a non-raft laying Culex. If you didn't catch the original paper in Scientific Reports you can read the blog. 🦟🧪 entomologytoday.org/2025/10/16/u....

Here is an ant-mimicking spider from the Amazon rainforest. I was heading down a trail back to our boat and saw it and got a few shots. It's one of 3 observations of the species on @inaturalist.bsky.social (Myrmecium deladanta) Cuyabeno Reserve, Ecuador 2022 #Arachtober

This fungus gnat emerged from a pile of rotting walnuts that I have a net over. Possibly Leia bivittata (Mycetophilidae), the larvae of which surround themselves in transparent bags of mucus that are extended whenever they want to move. Would like to see that. #diptera #flies #gnats #fungi #walnuts

I'm not exactly sure of the details, but this web-traffic business seems to be pushing the use of iNaturalist as way to increase ad revenue. One recommendation is to create an account and then direct users to webpages that ostensibly have nature content (and ads). #inaturalist #advertising

Did you know that there's an orchid that grows, and flowers, completely underground? It requires the help of a particular bush and fungi to get nutrients. And it's become very hard to find in the wild. #Science #News 🌱

Peltigera venosa, our Fan Pelt Lichen, flourishing on a mossy Ceran St. Vrain slope 🌿

This flyleaf comes with real flies! This early 18th century book has four flies preserved between the paste-down and the flyleaf. We wonder how they got there! [Sion A61.4/Ex1] #LambethPalaceLibrary #RareBooks #Flyleaf #SionCollege

Eastern tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) missing its hind wings, probably the result of a bird or mantid attack. Seemed to be making the best of the situation. #insects #lepidoptera #butterflies #monarda #flowers

Dazzling! Look at the twinkly iridescence of a ctenophore at ca. 5,000 m deep just above a vast expanse of polymetallic nodules. Tune in to EV Nautilus Live to see stunning critters & listen to the crew rank the food they are missing while at sea

How to protect your children by covering them in fungus (if you’re a stinkbug) www.science.org/content/arti...

My report for the Weevil Course I visited earlier this year in Arizona is ready! www.curculionoidea.org/gorgojito/vi...

For monarch fans, just a reminder that now is the perfect time to start stratifying milkweed seeds so that they'll germinate in the spring. #monarch #butterflies #milkweed #asclepias

One of the remora following a group of manatees a few years ago near Icacos Cay, PR. I always bought into the idea that they were scraping off parasites but apparently stomachs are full of manatee feces. Not sure which species this is. #remora #fish #manatees www.inaturalist.org/observations...

Just got blocked by a guy I was following after I praised him for an excellent blog post and let him know (privately) it had a tiny typo. I've received hundreds of messages about errors on my site over the years and I'm grateful for every single one. Most of them were sent by my mom. #science

A Pseudoscorpion from the garden in Shaftesbury last week, this one is the Reddish Two-eyed Chelifer, Roncus lubricus.

A garden find from Shaftesbury this week, I occasionally see these in the house (usually the kitchen) but this is the first outdoor one I've seen. This is a Wine Cellar Spider, Psilochorus simoni carrying her eggs. (I do have a small cellar but rarely any wine for very long)

Eric's black locust tree shades his neighbor's tomatoes. This situation often doesn't end well but in Eric's case, everybody kind of forgot about it and the neighbor moved away so fine. But not before Eric and trees have to come to terms. www.lastwordonnothing.com/2025/10/13/t...

Learning the spiders of the UK for Halloween season! This Linyphia triangularis (correct me if wrong) was beautifully posed in its delicate web on a cool day. #ukwildlife #bugsky #Invert #Linyphiidae 🌿

Marbled orbweaver (Araneus marmoreus). Plump (gravid), orange females are sometimes called pumpkin or Halloween spiders. Rose Valley, PA. #spiders #arachnids #halloween

Kailua Beach, Hawai’i: The first time I laid eyes on a By-the-wind sailor, I stopped dead in my tracks, dusted the sand off my hands, grabbed my iphone and...

Fulgoraecia exigua is the Planthopper Parasite Moth, a diminutive creature, the caterpillar of which lives as an external parasite of planthoppers, sucking the host’s hemolymph. Leavenworth, Kansas, USA, October 14, 2025. #bugsky #moth #moths #insects