- I think this is my last post on Asia for this year. Thanks for bearing with me as I catch up. A note on picture taking: the camera I am using is a point and shoot, Canon PowerShot A470. It was about $115. I leave it on manual and only use supermacro. That’s all I do. I don’t really know how to work a camera more than point and shoot. For mushroom undersides, I slide the camera under the mushroom cap and push the button. I don’t look at what I’m taking because I can’t get down that low for those shots. Anyhow, I love animals. Animals are my first love. So as I look for mushrooms, I’m also keeping an eye out for animals. These are few of animal pictures from Japan and Taiwan. Not enough critter pictures as there are mushrooms. They’re more elusive in the urban space and they flee and hide so one would need a better camera than what I got. Mushrooms stay pretty still so I don’t need more than a snap and shoot to get up close to them. These photos below are from Tokyo and Taiwan. We spent 2 amazing weeks in Taiwan up and down the west coast of the country being with extended family and being on our own. Taiwan is the shit. It’s amazing. It’s independent and should stay that way.
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- This cicada dropped outta the tree in Koishigawa Botanical Garden. its wings all askew, it beat them frantically only to turn itself upside down. Tanna japonensis, called higurashi in japanese. the cicada sounds are deafening and delightful.
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- bug on bug action
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- cicada skin
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- Hemiptera, true bug?
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- Jeez get a room! on the side of a busy highway across the street from the Grand Hotel in Taipei. We did a 15 mile walk through the city.
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- Asian giant hornet, Vespa mandarinia. World’s largest hornet, this thing will F* you up. Taipei, Taiwan but I also saw these in Tokyo CHASING BUTTERFLIES. I didn’t know how vicious these things were until reading about it. Here I am attempting to do the photo thing where I’m behind the subject like the photo at the top of this post. Phil was like, are you sure? Good thing I didn’t do it, this was as close as I got to it. Apparently it’s got a really bad, at times fatal, sting. It’s that bad.
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- Asian giant hornet, Vespa mandarinia feasting on a squashed lychee.
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- Phil Kaffen took this photo. a good sized snake that found itself on the edge of a very busy sidewalk in tokyo. it mighta fell out of a tree. someone who felt more comfortable about snakes and knowledgeable about what it was coulda probably gently grabbed it safely and put it back in the bushes. but security was called and then came in on bikes with some sweepers to hopefully put it back into the foliage. after that I started looking out for snakes on the sidewalks of tokyo.
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- Phil Kaffen took this photo of a red dragonfly in Kaoshiung, Taiwan.
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- big ass grasshopper, blurry, sorry, at Keelung Mountain, Taiwan
this giant dragonfly is in a previous post but wanted to bring it back for the animal section here because it is seriously the biggest dragonfly I'd ever seen. It was enormous!
this baby praying mantis was in the National Park for Nature Study, Tokyo Japan.
And finally, this last photo was taken by Phil Kaffen. I just love it. Lots of stray cats in Tokyo. Lots of stray dogs in Taiwan.
a very vocal cat. this cat just kept talking! photo by Phil Kaffen.
