Even in suburbia we are surrounded by an abundance of life but only rarely pay attention to it. On this website I will post photos of various small and big animals in my backyard. The goal is not only to show many cool critters but also to find out their names and learn more about their life. I am not a biologist. Be aware that some of my "assignments" are wrong. Please help me fixing mistakes by leaving feedback (or just say hi). My wife and I live in Tallahassee in a typical (and nice) neighborhood from the 1990s. Half of our yard is landscaped; across the street is a lake.


 

Here's one of our little neighbors: an Acrobat Ant. Many more photos are listed under the clickable options in the sidebar. I organize my photos of insects according to their class, order, or family. Please use the side bar options under 'Insects' to navigate to these different groups. The posted insect orders are:

- Coleoptera: beetles
- Diptera: true flies (incl. gnats and mosquitoes)
- Hemiptera: true bugs, cicadas, hoppers, aphids, and allies
- Hymenoptera: sawflies, wasps, bees, and ants
- Lepidoptera: butterflies and moths
- Odonata: dragonflies and damselfies
- Orthoptera: crickets, grasshoppers, katydids

My current camera is a Nikon D5100 with a Tamron (90mm f/2.8) 1:1 macro lens protected by a B+W UV filter. I usually shoot hand-held at relatively high ISO and aperture priority but I'm still learning (a lot) ... Occasionally I use the standard camera flash but a better flash system (Nikon R1C1?) is on my wish list. All photos prior to 7/16/11 were taken with an old point-and-shoot camera or a small camcorder (VPC-GH4 Sanyo Xacti). I also recorded some YouTube videos which are linked in the information paragraphs next to the photos and in the Species List via the icon.


I started this webpage on 6/15/11. Originally it was hosted as a no-cost google site but I quickly realized that I wanted a bit more flexibility and definitely a database-driven site. The dynamic parts of bugphotos.net are written in PHP and connect to a mySQL database.


Last but not least, I want to thank all the people who have helped me with the identification of the animals in my yard. As one would expect, the large majority of species are insects and their identification requires a lot of knowledge and experience. The website BugGuide.Net has been an invaluable resource and I am indebted to the BugGuide community for their help and patience.