mdyetmetaphor.com

Hmmm, engage with me for a few minutes if you will as I display the best of 2025 from the archive.

I do not herald the arrival of the New Year in any particularly significant way. After 67 years on this spinning globe we inhabit, the only definitive actions I take are disposing of the old calendars and installing the new ones.

But as a means of welcoming the New Year, I decided that my first post should feature a few on my favourite insect photos from 2025. A reminiscence of highlights from the year that has passed. A dash of colour to brighten up the very cold and snowy day that I behold as I look out the window.

The Brownish Deer Fly at the head of this post is my favourite photograph of the year. It was one of those chance occasions when timing, pose and lighting coincided to capture the subject perfectly. The subtle shades of brown and muted orange, the unique pattern in the raised wings and the fuzzy thorax are unexpectedly elegant.

This Hunch-backed Bee Fly is my favourite find of the year. It posed ever so cooperatively on a picnic table as if inviting me to admire it. The lime green body, the jet wing position of the dark wings and the hunched posture that give it is name make it so very distinctive.

American Rubyspot Damselflies are a regular find on one of my favourite trails along the Grand River. They are quite small making it a challenge to photograph them. Fortune smiled upon me that particular day generating a photo so sharp I was able to zoom in on the head. To my eye, it looks a bit like an extraterrestrial being with its bulging green eyes on an angular head.

Black-legged Meadow Katydids are neither common nor particularly uncommon. They can be difficult to photograph as they scramble along leaves sometimes on the underside. This one condescended to pose out in the open allowing me to capture the translucent green wings and the characteristic black legs that give it its name.

Two-horned Treehoppers are extremely small and easily overlooked. Fortunately their bodies are chunky allowing my zoom telephoto lens to focus on them. This one looks rather like a miniature dinosaur on the hunt in the foliage with its distinct horns and fierce appearance.

It was very late in the season when I came across this striking Typical Leafhopper (Gyponana gladia). Unusually large for a Leafhopper and adorned in eye-catching, mottled, orangey-pink garb, it was impossible to overlook on the wood post it chose to hold onto.

It will be several months before winter releases its grip and the spring of 2026 begins to bloom. Until that time these still life captures from 2025 will have to sustain me. May they also brighten your day in the icy grip of January as 2026 unfolds its wings.

~  Now Available Online from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting Muskie, Rites of Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet

~ Michael Robert Dyet is also the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel (now out of print) which was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com .

~ Subscribe to Michael’s Metaphors of Life Journal aka That Make Me Go Hmmm at its’ internet home www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2. Instructions for subscribing are provided in the Subscribe to this Blog: How To instructions page in the right sidebar. If you’re reading this post on another social networking site, come back regularly to my page for postings once a week.

Tags:   American Rubyspot · Black-legged Meadow Katydid · Brownish Deer Fly · Hunch-backed Bee Fly · metaphor · Michael Robert Dyet · Two-horned Treehopper · Typical LeafhopperNo Comments