etc

@etchachan.bsky.social

88 Followers 95 Following

Like the loch. Formerly https://cohost.org/etc . On here and mastodon (https://toot.wales/@etc) these days. They/them. Slowly constructing a web site at https://zawn.dev/ but honestly I’m not cut out for long form stuff.

A bumblebee resting on a white wild carrot flower head. It is sitting quite still and ignored my approach. Its mouthparts are extended and stuck into one of the florets, like someone falling asleep with a straw in their mouth.
A salsify! I can’t remember having seen one of these in our garden before, so that’s exciting. The flower itself has the classic dandelion look, with broader and flatter outer yellow petals and a dense cluster of small yellow florets in the middle. The yellow stamens have a dark brownish base. Unlike a dandelion, there’s a ring of 8 long and thin green leaves around the base of the flower.
A large cluster of yellow ragwort flowers, and one small black and yellow striped cinnabar moth caterpillar.
A small common frog, in a shallow pool, frames by green vegetation and a few small shed purple petals from a flower. The frog is a sort of buff colour mottled with large black patches and speckled with smaller and fainter black dots. The head protrudes from the water, and one eye is watching me carefully in case I get too close.
A female lesser diving beetle, resting on some chert gravel. Her hind legs are quite long and chunky and bristly and are used for swimming. Her body is oval and a very dark brown, with longitudinal grooves on the wing cases (elytra) filled with short paler brown hairs. She has two thin antennae and round black eyes . The fuzzy stripes on the elytra are part of some kind of adversarial mating strategy… the males have suction cups to hang on to the slippery females, but that is apparently bad for the female as it makes it more likely they’ll get eaten by predators, so they make themselves as hard to hold on to as possible to speed up their escape.
The logo of the fuxtec company.
A screenshot of the bluesky reply popup. The photographs in the OP are arranged in a nice two by two square grid. Unlike how they appear in the normal view, cropped vertically.
Wild carrot flower head, still unfurling. The flower head is a dense mat of many tiny white flowers on their own fine stalks, in a vaguely umbrella-like style, forming a flattish round mat. There’s a line dark purple floret in the very centre.
An adult cinnabar moth, clinging to the underside of a greater knapweed leaf. They fold their wings up quite closely, so the black body is largely hidden behind the slim black triangular wing, showing the only head and legs. A thick red stripes marks the leading edge of the wings and two red blobs mark the inner and outer corners of the trailing edge.
The flower head of a common sainfoin. There are many flowers on the head, each a surprisingly bright pink with deeper pink veins. The shape reminds me of a square-rigged boat, with a curved vertical petal for the sail, and another as pointed hull jutting out beneath it.
A pair of making common blue damsel flies. The male is perched on the gone-over flower head of plantain, and is holding the female by the neck using the claspers on the tip of his long abdomen. The female has her abdomen arched up underneath her, and is ticking the top of it to the end of his thorax to receive some sperm.
Lesser knapweed. We have big boring bushes of greater knapweed elsewhere, but the lesser stuff looks much prettier, and is much less spready. The leaves are long and thin and the flower is thistle like… a puffball of long and slender tubelike individual flowers which are white at the base tending through pale purple to dark purple at the tip.
A dense cluster of yellow ragwort flower buds, still closed, atop a few frilly green leaves. Crawling over the buds is a young cinnabar moth caterpillar, less than 2cm long. Its body has thin alternating black and orange stripes, and a few fine white hairs protrude from either end of the body. The head is on the left, only distinguishable by being a slightly more black than the tail end.
An adult box moth, resting on some white painted wood, wings open and flat against the surface forminga sort of diamond silhouette. The head, tip of its tail and a thick outline around the wings are all black, whereas the body and the middle of the wings are as silvery white.
A genoese crossbowman, cropped from a painting of the battle of crecy, from a 15th-century illuminated manuscript of Jean Froissart's Chronicles He’s been shot twice with arrows as he flees the battle , once on the right thought and once in the right buttock. He’s wearing some sort of fabric surcoat, possibly padded, but visible below the waist is what looks a lot like the hem of a mail hauberk. It is flush against the skin, and the artist has made it very clear how closely it wraps around the crossbowman’s behind, separating and underlining the glutes. His legs may be covered by tightly fitting buff-coloured leggings, or he may just be bare to the ankles like he’s in iron hot pants.
A small and slightly battered red poppy with the small hoverflies. One has landed and is feeding, one is perhaps taking off and heading away left, and one is just coming in to land from the right. The right most one is silhouetted against a piece of out-of-focus white building waste showing its black, yellow and white striped abdomen relatively clearly.
A marbled white butterfly, perched on a stalk of grass, wings closed, against an out-of-focus background of clover. The underside of the wings has a pale off-white colour with dark veins and small dusty brown patches with angular black outlines.
A medium-sized wasp on the corner of a folded wad of paper, on top of a metal mesh. It is facing towards the camera, showing its funky head and large black compound eyes and its large yellow jaws. There are three small simple eyes on the top of its black head, arranged in a triangle pattern.
A scarlet tiger moth perching on a leaf of some ivy that’s clinging to a wooden fence. The moth’s wings are mostly folded forming a triangular shape with the head at one point. The forewings are a glossy black with symmetrical cream-coloured splotches, and the hind wings, of which only a thin wedge is visible at the back, are a vivid red colour with black splotches.
Some english lavender blooms, some with petals and some gone over but all a strong purple colour, and a buff-tailed bumblebees feeding from them.
The end of a branch of buddleia, pigtailed against the afternoon sun rendering the background overexposed white. The leaves are a bit wrinkled and covered in blackfly. There are two large ladybird larvae next to each other feeding on them, and one large adult harlequin ladybird a little further along the leaf.
A dark reddish coloured damselfly sitting on as patch of whitish lichen on a rock. The very dark abdomen suggests the “melanotum” colouration variant, which is only shown by females. The legs are black, distinguishing it from the small red damselfly species.
A round blue and white bowl full of soft fruit, red raspberries and black mulberries, on a black granite counter top.
A cluster of six green opium poppy seed heads, with little yellow crown-like structures which will eventually form the sort of shakers that will distribute the seeds in a breeze. In the background are out-of-focus pink sweet pea flowers on a large bush.
A normal opium poppy seen from the front, with flour slightly overlapping bright pink petals with dark patches at their bases forming across pattern. Inside that is a ring of pale fluffy stamens, and at the centre is the greenish yellow eight-segmented bit that will form the seed pod when the flower is fertilised. There’s a bumblebee just approaching this one and extending its legs which are slightly dusted with pollen from another flower.
Four open bright pink opium poppies and one just-opening bud growing by a roadside. They have a tissue substitution mutation that has caused them to fill their flowers with long thin petals instead of normal reproductive structures, and they’ve turned into a fluffy looking ball like a pompom. The four normal petals are visible at the base of the nearest pompom.
The small purple flowerheads and a few nettle-like leaves of a tall plant. The flowers are arranged in clusters around the main stalk where the leaves branch out. Manny of the flowers have dropped, leaving behind an empty conical green calyx
A small and skinny hoverfly with wings outstretched and a yellow and black striped abdomen is perched on the central yellow florets of a slightly batter oxeye daisy blossom that is missing half of its large white petals.
A photograph of a metal national trust sign in wales on a weathered and lichen covered rock, reading Yr Ymddiriedolaeth Genedlaethol The National Trust Carneddau The first line on the text is wrapped around the trust’s oak leaf logo.
A wide and ominously crinkled and folded cloud rolls ahead of a dark grey and featureless bank of very heavy rain, with a very thin slice of gold and orange sunset beneath, just above mynydd twr and holyhead.
A screenshot of a tumblr thread. flittering-sylph Man I hate it when people use the pronoun "you" as a singular pronoun in an informal setting. "You" is plural, unless thou dost speak to an unfamiliar person. The correct singular second person pronoun is "thou" in most cases. Grammar never changes. Pronouns must always stay one way until the end of time. Learn thy proper English. *sigh* Kids these days. gollyplot If thou this mistake shouldst make on thine own blog, then know, villain, that thou art a dirty descriptivist, and no friend of mine. Ne'er should language itself alter, it doth remain fixèd as such, untouch'd by change. Wouldst thou, vile descriptivist, that we forget the heritage of our great tongue? Nay, say I. Thou art but a dickhead who sayest so. kingfucko stynt y clappe! beo o writerris be wetleas knafen. y langag o engelond diffoulened be, ille usenid bi sclaundrous novelri.
Groundsel. They’re pretty boring to look at… they seem to be about to open up into dandelion-like flowers, but actually these are the flowers. Unlike other asters, all they have is the cluster of tiny yellow florets, and lack the big circle of petals that other daisies and dandelions have. They transition directly from these yellow-tipped green bundles into fluffy seed balls.
Forget-me-not. Little five-pointed flowers a few mm across, with each petal being mostly blue but with a white inner circle and a yellow circle inside that, with five tiny yellow stamens just about visible.
Flax. This one is a little tenuous, as it almost certainly grew from some seed shed from our bird feeder, but it is technically a wild plant in this country and I didn’t seed it deliberately. The flower is about 2cm across and has five pale purplish petals with much darker bluish veins. The centre of the flower has five stamens with white stalks and pale blue tips that grow together into a sort of conical cage yellow centre.
Ox-eye daisy. It looks pretty much like a regular daisy, with a ring of man long thin white petals around the edge, and a dense bobbly circular cluster of tiny yellow florets. Unlike a regular daisy, the flowers are much bigger… these were about 4cm across and on a 20cm stalk.
A painted lady butterfly, wings closed, in profile against a blue sky. It is perched on a pink valerian bloom, and its proboscis is just visible as a black line against the pink centre of one of the flowers. Some defocussed fluffy white clouds and green foliage partially frame the shot.
A giant cranefly perched between a green bracken frond and a just-unfurling bracken head. It has a long and thin dark coloured segmented body, long spindly legs and its head is dark brown with two large round and protruding black eyes. Its wings stick out on either side instead of being folded in neatly and have black tinted triangular sections against the leading edge that are distinctly different from smaller kinds of cranefly.
Thick grey cloud over an orange sunset, with raf valley and Holyhead mountain on the horizon. Two bolts of lightning cross the sky in quick succession, from top left to the centre, and from top centre to the right.
A top-down view of a clear plastic bucket with a little sand and seaweed at the bottom, and a large number of amphipods of several different species and sizes swimming round and round at great speed.
A top-down view of a clear plastic bucket with a little sand and seaweed at the bottom, and a large number of amphipods of several different species and sizes swimming round and round at great speed.
Four common poppy flowers against a green background of poppy foliage and undergrowth. Instead of the usual bright red, these are partially a washed-out looking pink, fading to white at the edges and the black markings at the base of the petals are entirely absent. Three are shedding their petals and forming seed pods.
A human skull on a shelf, showing a very large hole where most of the left-hand side of the skull would be. Inside is an empty robin’s nest made of grass.
A top-down view of a bushy greater celandine plant, showing two bright yellow four petalled flowers. A long green seed pod is starting to form in the middle of each flower, and some mature seeds and immature buds are visible in the frame, though most of the foliage is out of focus.
A branch of an apricot tree against a brick wall, shaded by its foliage and laden with seven large, unripe fruit which are vivid green underneath and a fuzzy dusty pink on the top. Several other fruit are partially visible.
A photograph of an engraved stone plaque in an alleyway in Hythe, reading All Persons are requefted to unite their Endeavours to keep this Place clean. and to prevent Boys or others from dirting the fame.
A white rubble sack overflowing with poppy foliage and covered with red poppy flowers.
The skull of a smallish rodent, probably a squirrel. The bones have been picked clean and there’s no soft tissue left and the bone is aged and weathered and the more delicate parts around the sinuses and orbits are damaged. It sits upon a wooden tabletop.
A pair of flies of some kind, perched upon the outside of a glass window, silhouetted against clear blue sky over defocussed green trees, mating.
A small powder-blue butterfly on a broad green leaf. The butterfly’s wings are folded and showing a few black speckles and just-visible black leading wing edges. It’s legs and antennae are black and shit striped, and it’s large black eyes are clearly visible against its fluffy whitish body.
A wall of old dry grey bones, mostly femurs, seen end-on (sometimes the hip end, sometimes the knee) with a single skull looking out from the centre of the frame
A screenshot of a page of the pdf rules for Stars Without Number, at the character creation section. A popup generated by the pdf rendering software on my ipad is saying “AutoFill can assist with filling in this form.”
A side-on view of a robber fly, perched on the metal arm of a deckchair with blue mesh upholstery. The fly has a long, thin dark coloured abdomen with faint greyish stripes, and a point end. Its legs are orangey, sparsely haired and dark at the joints. Between its large eyes can be seen the bristly grey “moustache” that many flies of this type have.
A dense cluster of spiderlings in their nursery web on the rim of a plant pot. The spiders aren’t more than 2mm across their abdomens, and are a bright golden yellow colour with a black triangular or hourglass shaped patch on the back side. The fine strands of their web shine silvery white against the dry brown earth in the bottom of the pot. There’s also a dried yellow and purple tulip petal down there.
A pair of timarcha beetles, mating. They’re quite robust and round with black carapaces that have a metallic blue tint. The female is walking slowly through leafy green ground cover whilst the male clings on tight.
An adult oil beetle walking on some undergrowth. The beetle’s carapace is black with a metallic blue sheen, and the abdomen is surprisingly long and segmented. The beetles are flightless, and the elytra that cover the wings in other beetle species are much reduced, and look like coattails. The background is bits of dry, dead bracken frond, with a few leaves of some new growth of some other kind of plant poking through.
A photo a of the sky entirely covered with grey cloud, but densely crinkled and perhaps thin, with high contrast between the thicker dark grey regions and their much paler and brighter surrounds. The day wasn’t at all rainy or stormy.
The top two-thirds of a wild radish. The plant is taller than wide, and slightly branched. Each branch is topped with a cluster of buds and veined white cross-shaped flowers in the standard brassica style.