He’s handsome and he knows it: a male Io Moth (Automeris io) with his big fancy feathery antennae, perfect for picking up the chemical trail of a female. This is his sole purpose as an adult, as he has no functional mouthparts; his is not to reason why, his is but to mate and die

The view from the driveway last night, where the fireflies were putting on quite the show! I’m told there are at least some Photuris species in there—the canopy looked as if camera flashes were going off in a crowded arena. Getting to watch them never gets old.

Quick shot of a Golden Tortoise Beetle (Charidotella sexpunctata)-quick by necessity, because they change colors once disturbed, shifting from shiny gold to a red color meant to mimic ladybugs. I think they’re one of the prettiest creatures on the entire planet of earth

A great big ol’ Tigrosa sp. wolfie gal with a late night snack… a cricket I think, although it was a wee bit mangled. Those large eyes don’t just make wolf spiders super charismatic—they also enable them to find and run down their prey, even at night.

A most damsel-y shy little damselfly; this one—an Ischnura species—kept spinning around its perch to get away from me. They’re so cute that it’s easy to forget what wildly efficient predators they are.

It’s #WorldBeeDay today, so here’s this beautiful female Nomad Bee (Nomada) backlit by the rising sun . Diversity of bees is pretty wild, with many being pretty darn small. They’re very easy to overlook if you don’t take the time to appreciate them, so go appreciate some bees!

I was photographing a spider when I heard something crunching the leaves a few feet away: an Eastern Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina) that wanted absolutely NOTHING to do with me. I kept the pestering to a minimum and let it be, but not without a few shy portraits!

Hiding among the bellflowers, a Whitebanded Crab Spider (Misumenoides formosipes) waits for a meal to come her way. This was from last year, but we should be seeing some wee babies here soon!

My first Nomada sp. cuckoo bee of the year! I caught this lady sleeping in on a cold morning, but she will have taken off shortly after to patrol for other bees’ nests. Nomad Bees are cleptoparasites, laying their eggs in the nests of solitary bees

A bolas spider from last year—Mastophora hutchinsoni—with her weapon at the ready. She appeared well-fed and stayed in that spot for many days, indications that she’d had some successful hunts. Hopefully she left some eggs nearby!

Listen, if you’re a wasp and you come into my home looking like that, you’re going to get the supermodel treatment. She—a wildly pretty Polistes sp. paper wasp—found her way into my office, where I conveniently keep my camera, so we had a photoshoot before she went on her way

A floof so floofy you have to wonder how it can see at all: Eacles imperialis, the Imperial Moth. There are a big set of eyes somewhere underneath all those beautiful scales, I promise.

One of the masters of blending in, a juvenile Jagged Ambush Bug (Phymata sp.) is—especially with the naked eye—almost indistinguishable from the plant it's hunting from. They'll be back to tormenting the pollinators before too long!

When the rain gives you an opportunity to photograph a cuckoo wasp (Chrysididae), you had best seize it, because as soon as she’s dry she’ll be zipping around feeding on nectar and looking for something to parasitize. Boy are they pretty

The pollinators don’t stand a chance when Whitebanded Crab Spiders (Misumenoides formosipes) decide to hide in the goldenrod. They are SO hard to see when they’re tucked into a cluster of flowers, but they’re also super pretty in their yellow camo.

I love wasps, and I love flies that pretend to be wasps, and few do it better than Physocephala sagittaria—a thick-headed fly with a great name and beautiful ferruginous coloration that masterfully mimics Polistes wasps.

These gorgeous ladies rule our backyard for a good chunk of the year, and I miss them right now. Even the less dramatically colored Acanthepeira sp. orb weavers are just gorgeous.

One of the more impressive maternal caretakers of the arthropod world, the Oak Treehopper (Platycotis vittata). From the time the big momma in the middle laid eggs in her chosen oak branch until they were all grown up, she never left her offspring unattended

I’m convinced that Tmarus sp. crab spiders squash themselves so flatly against tree limbs that they the fuse their molecules together… when they stop moving and hunker down, they all but disappear into the tree. Really impressive little animals!

One of these days I’m going to lean in a bit too closely to one of these splendidly spiky friends, but the promise of eventual envenomation won’t keep me from trying to get a bug’s eye view of saddleback caterpillars (Acharia stimulea) whenever I get the chance. So pretty!