Backyard and Beyond

Starting out from Brooklyn, an amateur naturalist explores our world.

As John Burroughs said, “The place to observe nature is where you are.”

Earth Space

I know there’s plenty of gnashing of teeth over the end of the space shuttle program, a sort of a low-earth-orbit FedEx, but I invite the star-crossed to look around them down here with more attention. There’s so much yet to be discovered here on Earth.

For instance, I was going through some photos, and this one, posted here earlier this month, caught my eye again. Follow the bristles to the right…Eureka! I didn’t notice this initially. As I didn’t see a similar leaf-toned critter when I took this shot of mating ladybugs. Judging from Bugguide.net, these are aphids. They’re so damn small. But those dark eyes really stick out

I was also recently thinking about the 1966 film Blow Up, in which an oh-so-Mod British photographer keeps magnifying a photo because… well, I don’t want to spoil it for you (if you can handle the Art Cinema pretension of the thing). Things are not often as they seem, to be sure — but things are often just not seen at all.

Memo to self: Look!

mthew

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2 responses to “Earth Space”

  1. Nate

    The shuttle was a nationalist endeavor and a cold war relic, an expensive and unsafe one at that. It should’ve been decommissioned a long time ago. It would also be nice if we could pawn the $100B ISS for something useful. Both are more about progressing technology and less about studying nature. Manned spaceflight promotes the destructive delusion that nationalism and technology can overcome nature.

    We should focus on doing real science in space; more robotic exploration, more telescopes and more probes – all of which are pretty cheap compared to manned spaceflight and have provided an amazing perspective on our place in the universe.

    There’s so much to be learned about the natural world, and both galaxies and aphids are worthy subjects to study. Can you recommend a good guide book about insects?

    Nate

    Reply
    1. mthew

      I use the National Wildlife Federation Field Guide to Insects and Spiders of North America, by A.V. Evans, who is evidently working on a beetle guide for them. I use bugguide.net a lot too; they will help to ID submitted pics of bugs. Too many of the damn things to be in one single text, or dare I say, app, so there are a lot of specialized books about certain families. Tons about ants and honey bees.

      Reply

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