Western Australia!
Just returned from the Aus Ent Soc meetings in Perth and ten days of fieldwork in beautiful Western Australia, including the Outback at its Outbackiest. It was amazing, here is a handful of photos 'til I can flickr them all up.
Megabuprestids! These guys are actually illegal to collect; we found them dead whilst out headlamping, and sadly left them in WA. The reason you can't collect them: the monstrously enormous females bear a regrettable phenotypic similarity to empty stubbies, which litter WA roads by the thousands. Male attempts to mate with the bottles have apparently resulted in a measurable decline in population numbers, or so I'm told.
Found this handsome devil in the desert. A Phrynosom-alike!
Dinosaur tracks.
First one to identify my new pal here wins all the points. Absolutely the highlight of the trip.
As usual, I sketched speakers during their talks. Here's the whole thing, spot your favorite Aussie entomologists.
The meeting was held at a spookily remote, largely golf-based resort all too far from the city, but not far enough to keep me from paying a visit to the completely delightful humans tiny_monster and tedprior (both of whose journals contain a glorious bounty of indie comics, might I add).
tiny_monster's birthday picnic festivities also featured (much to my astonishment) Perth's greatest all-ladies ukelele trio and best-band-name-havers, "Raptor Mishap":
( original terrible sketch)
These guys were the greatest, I could listen to their foolishness all day. Thank you, Raptor Mishap!
Back at the meeting, I snuck out of the applied talks and tried some landscape (well, tree) sketches, inspired by the recent efforts of jabberworks. Bonus: a completely fabricated Haeckel-lookin' tree. Eucalypts for all!
Megabuprestids! These guys are actually illegal to collect; we found them dead whilst out headlamping, and sadly left them in WA. The reason you can't collect them: the monstrously enormous females bear a regrettable phenotypic similarity to empty stubbies, which litter WA roads by the thousands. Male attempts to mate with the bottles have apparently resulted in a measurable decline in population numbers, or so I'm told.
Found this handsome devil in the desert. A Phrynosom-alike!
Dinosaur tracks.
First one to identify my new pal here wins all the points. Absolutely the highlight of the trip.
As usual, I sketched speakers during their talks. Here's the whole thing, spot your favorite Aussie entomologists.
The meeting was held at a spookily remote, largely golf-based resort all too far from the city, but not far enough to keep me from paying a visit to the completely delightful humans tiny_monster and tedprior (both of whose journals contain a glorious bounty of indie comics, might I add).
tiny_monster's birthday picnic festivities also featured (much to my astonishment) Perth's greatest all-ladies ukelele trio and best-band-name-havers, "Raptor Mishap":
( original terrible sketch)
These guys were the greatest, I could listen to their foolishness all day. Thank you, Raptor Mishap!
Back at the meeting, I snuck out of the applied talks and tried some landscape (well, tree) sketches, inspired by the recent efforts of jabberworks. Bonus: a completely fabricated Haeckel-lookin' tree. Eucalypts for all!