Fragility (March 2025)

Don't bust the crust! Cryptobiotic soil crusts can take a human lifetime or longer to form and they are critical to the desert ecosystem.

Lens-Artists Challenge #342: It’s a Wild Life!

This week Egídio from Through Brazilian Eyes is hosting the Challenge, and his theme is, ‘It’s a Wild Life‘. ‘What is wild?’ Egídio asks. The dictionary says it is, ‘living in a state of nature, untamed, uncivilized, not inhabited or cultivated, uncontrolled, unruly,’ and Egídio asks the question, ‘I am curious about what you consider wild. Is it a place, a person, wildlife, wildflowers, or something else?’

Living in the countryside we get a lot of wildlife, cranes nesting on electricity pylons, eagles living in the nearby woods, but we only ever see them from afar. So I’m left with the smaller animals and insects that dominate the local woodlands, and occasionally even land in our garden: flies, bees, reptiles, and so forth.

We used to have some large cypress trees in the garden, and occasionally we would get spiders making a web in the spaces between two trees. Here the spider is in the middle of preparing their lunch.

This dragonfly probably accidentally flew into the shade in our garden. Fortunately we were able to encourage it back into the sunshine, where it perked up and soon flew off.

The neighbours have a small orchard, and a few years ago it was completely overgrown. I would take my camera out to photograph the flowers and insects in the spring, and this bee was feeding from a flower. Taken with a zoom lens, I love this image.

After the rain one day, I came across this wasp on a rosebush in the garden. It was still quite cold, and a little sluggish. Just as well, I’m very wary of wasps.

In the woods behind our house, my photos are not limited to the trees. This fly was caught from a really low angle, and the lovely colour in the background is the clear blue sky.

We get a lot of small lizards everywhere in Portugal, and as often as not they’ll be spotted basking in the sun or running away when approached. This one, though, was caught in the shade on the wall of our office. It probably didn’t hang around for long, though. Just long enough for me to grab a portrait.

Themes for the Lens-Artists Challenge are posted each Saturday at 12:00 noon EST (which is 4pm, GMT) and anyone who wants to take part can po3st their images during the week. If you want to know more about the Challenge, details can be found here, and entries can be found on the WordPress reader using the tag ‘Lens-Artists’.

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Funkelndes Meer. Sparkling sea.

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Rose
#rose #color #closeup #beautiful #photo #photography #picture #image

Nature
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Lichens on a thick tree trunk

Ein Hauch von #Neon 
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