Huge Beetle

Jess was out pruning the roses and came across this monster beetle hanging on to one of the stems.

Here's a less interesting, but more informative photo of the thing that I buried in my photostream:



This photo is a good example of how you can get a decent "macro" shot with your kit lens. The focal length of the lens doesn't affect the minimum focusing distance, so you can focus as close as possible then zoom all the way in to 55mm and get pretty good magnification. I wrote my very first blog post in 2009 about this subject, and interestingly enough it's by far my biggest source of traffic.

If you agitated this guy, he'd buzz something in front of his mouth and make a chirping sound; here's a little clip of it.


Here's the original, unedited image.