Backyard wildlife

"Amazing how nature endows these little creatures with such intricate color and detail..."

Friend, mentor, journalist, loyal blog-reader and clearly talented photographer, Jonathan Bor, sent me this awesome picture recently taken in his backyard and I can't get over how close he was able to get to this critter. After a few shots like this one, Jonathan actually pulled the blade of grass and moved him to a clay dish and the little fella let him do it!

There is a secret passageway (also knows as: a space desperately in need of some caulk) from the hose faucet outside our house into some plumbing apparatus on the opposite wall inside our little half bath, through which many a critter like these have found there way into our home. Every once in a while, the house guest is a sweet young grasshopper (as opposed to wolf spiders the size of my hand and crickets that look like something from the Mesozoic era) and I gotta tell you... they are pretty hard to catch with a cup or a net let alone a camera.

Thanks for sharing, Jonathan!