Photo of the Day: Drinking From the Russian Olive

Drinking From the Russian Olive, originally uploaded by JeremyT.

I'm not sure what kind of insect this is. I think it's probably an actual bug. I didn't do anything to enhance how red it is. That's how red it really was . I didn't upload the many bug orgy shots i got of this particular species. These guys were crawling all over the place by the dozens, stripping the leaves off of a poor russian olive tree that had the misfortune to grow next to the decaying log that they made their home. I poked around the log for a while, looking for other residents. Saw some mysterious movement down in the decay, and turned my head slightly to see the shed skin of a rather massive snake, probably four inches in diameter. Snakes don't frigthen me, but I don't want to be bitten and when looking through this new lens, I am less than an inch away from my subject.

So I left that log alone and went off in search of something else to photograph. I missed a tiny toad by mere seconds. Meh! I'll catch one some day.